Fallout: Autumn Leaves
by SaintHeartwing
Summary: A young man from our world finds himself within the Fallout Universe. Without any knowledge of Fallout and no special powers to help him, in an Earth that's felt the ravages of war, can Nick Grey still be a hero in a world that seems to mock the very concept, and solve the mystery within the Hypatia library? An adaptation/dramatization of Autumn Leaves for Fallout: New Vegas.
1. A Whole New World

" _The great danger facing us today is not so much the atomic bomb that was created by physical science. Not so much that atomic bomb that you can put in an aeroplane and drop on the heads of hundreds and thousands of people as dangerous as that is. But the real danger confronting civilization today is that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts and souls of men, capable of exploding into the vilest of hate and into the most damaging selfishness—that's the atomic bomb that we've got to fear today. Problem is with the men. Within the heart and the souls of men. That is the real basis of our problem." Martin Luther King Jr_

* * *

It had been said that those who lived through the Atomic Bomb had been the true victims, for the agony they endured was far, far worse than the relatively swift death that had come from the explosions of "Fat Man" and "Little Boy". THOSE "lucky dogs" had been almost instantly obliterated, maybe briefly aware of their fate for a nanosecond before unholy fire ripped through their skin and bones and muscle, their tendons shattering into meaty chunks as even these were dissolved by the intense, unending flame. Those that survived had been endured far worse, blood poisoning that ate them up from within as they vomited out what little remained of their cooked insides. Their hair fell out, their skin flaking off, endless bleeding that didn't seem to stop, and worse still...diarrhea.

It was agony. Absolute. Pure. Agony.

And now Nicholas Michael Grey flopped onto the ground, screaming himself beyond hoarseness. A moment ago, he had been facing down certain death. Lost in nuclear fire, aware he was going to die a horrific, terrible death, all in the name of ensuring his comrades didn't suffer. Nick knew it was going to hurt.

He hadn't cared. He hadn't cared because he was expendable. When you could die over and over, blessed and cursed with the ability to constantly come back, you could not help but somewhat take it for granted, and to exploit it however you could. It had been wonderful at first. A realization that nothing could keep him down. That nobody could beat him. That he could do what others could, save lives by sacrificing himself again and again, and because he could come back...what did he have to lose? Why should others endure the unendurable when he could do it for them, and then some!

Why should others die when you could do it for them? Again and again and again. And it could even be fun. He'd actually made a few decent bucks off Russian Roulette. It had almost become a game! And going from world to world, reality to reality, he'd felt blessed beyond belief. He could do what so many others couldn't. He felt like he was making a difference, almost every day had felt like Christmas. What kid WOULDN'T want to hang with Mario and Link? Who WOULDN'T want to ride in a spaceship through the Mass Effect universe? Who WOULDN'T be overjoyed to see their favorite Disney characters? It'd been a dream come true!

But there was another gift he had. A gift that he loved...and despised. It seemed to be a double-edged sword to remind him of the heavy crown that weighed him down. He could turn the music he heard and sung into fantastic abilities, and it had helped him save lives again and again. He had loved it so much, at first. It had been beautiful to cause fires to swell up singing a bit of Elvis. To fly through the sky with the right country tune. And to make beautiful sights with a good love song. It had been wonderful.

Until he realized he couldn't turn it off. Until he realized...he had to be very, very careful about what he listened to and sang. He didn't dare listen to any of the old Ozzy Osbourne tracks he'd used to like. He had become of what would happen if he started singing Christmas songs even when it was Christmas, not wanting to engulf everything around him in ice and snow. And if he slipped and started singing R.E.M's famous little track with Mr. Bernstein-

At one point, music had been an escape from the issues of the world around him. A way to get away from everything, to just lose himself in happiness, or the good kind of sadness that would make you cry, but be glad you were crying, for it was like saying goodbye to an old toy you used to love playing with, an old book you'd loved reading. It hurt, but...it was a good hurt that made you think of happy times and old dreams, and the smile would come to your face even as some tears sprang in your eyes. Sometimes the music could get him pumped and excited, sometimes it was simply nice white noise to play as he went through his day, acting like the truest rhythm of his heart.

Music had been at the heart of his soul. A constant reminder of something wonderful and amazing that humanity had made. A better creation than the wheel or the fire. Something Heavenly and Divine.

Now what had been his sword and shield for pangs and arrows of outrageous fortune of the world around him had turned into the sword of Damocles hanging over his head. And he grit his teeth, looking around, clutching at his sides. He didn't recognize where he was. It was some kind of gigantic, dusty desert. Normally he'd be grateful the wind was blowing, he loved the wind, the coolness of it on his face and skin. But here? It was burning against his ravaged, reddened, skinned flesh. He was sure that he was dying from radiation poisoning, the aftereffects of the bomb were kicking in, and kicking in hard.

"OH GOD-BLAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" He flopped onto his knees, letting out another agonized wail, vomiting onto the desert sand below him, panting and heaving, trying to rise back up to his feet, shaking madly, quivering and shaking as he looked nervously around. Safety. Shelter. Somewhere, anywhere, where the-

Then he saw it. A small little settlement off in the distance, what looked like an abandoned shack made of metal panels and the like. It was as if someone had tried to put together a home out of junkyard scraps, and it wasn't too far off. Even though his legs felt as though they were now just on fire, but needles of acid had been jammed into them, he willed himself to move forward, further...further. He grunted, cringing, and slammed himself into the door. "Any...anybody...home?!"

He was amazed at how hoarse and ravaged his voice was. It sounded like he'd drunken glass. His vocal chords were probably near-shredded...and he vomited on his shoes again, cringing in disgust as he managed to wipe his mouth. Silence echoed through the air and Nick finally decided to take action.

THA-THWAM. He shoved himself through the door. "Hello!? Look, I'm really sorry but I'm super sick and...and…"

He almost vomited again. A man was dead off to the side, clearly having committed suicide. Nick turned pale, his hazel green eyes wide, his normally rosy cheeks going even paler than usual. The man's head had been blown slightly open, a pistol in his palm, a journal flopped to the side of a table. Making his way over to the man, Nick knelt by the bearded figure, a look of regret creeping onto his features as he reached out and gently closed the man's eyes.

Then he reached for the diary, and looked it over, his expression becoming even sadder.

"I can't take it anymore. I've run clean out of food and the Deathclaws have their nest so close. Why the hell did they have to settle down there? They've cut off my way to town and my stupid little pistol couldn't make a damn dent in them. Only one way. Forgive me, mom."

Nick read it again and again and again, slowly closing his eyes before opening them again, and closing the diary...noticing something on the floor. A few other books with…

...a trademark he recognized. A trademark that made his body go cold as his mouth opened wide. "Oh...craaaaaaaaaap." He whispered.

Vault-Tec.

VAULT-TEC. He knew that name! He knew that company! It wasn't real, it was just a game, a well-known game but one he knew almost nothing about! But that smiling little blonde-haired little black-eyed boy on the cover of that "Vaults are Your Friends" book that laid next to a comic book of "La Fantome" was impossible to forget. He knew about that stupid little smiling mockery.

He knew where he was now.

The Fallout Universe was a world ravaged by nuclear war. People lived in vaults deep underground, he remembered that as well! But…

"Crap, crap, crap, crap!" Nick cried out, tugging at his brown hair, biting his lip, now flopping onto the bed nearby as it squeaked, the flimsy blankets crumbling underneath his frame. "I never played the games! I can't even remember any of the characters except that stupid Vault Boy! I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead!" He whimpered before slapping himself with his hand. He ignored the pain that shot through him and grit his teeth. "Get a grip on yourself. So you don't know anything about Fallout. You can learn. First thing's first. Medicine. Some...some painkillers, ANYTHING…" He murmured as he glanced around the room.

Ah-ha. A big, white medicine box on the table where the journal had fallen off! He pulled it open, and a big IV esque bag was there, full of some strange liquid, with a radiation symbol on the front and a label that read "RadAway". Looking over the instructions on the back, Nick's eyes widened. "Oh. A cure for radiation! Thank you Jesus!" He proclaimed in delight, ripping the top of the bag open and slurping down the contents.

About half an hour later, he was regretting this. Because he was now behind the shack he'd taken shelter in, cringing in aggravation, having spent every ten minutes since he'd drunk up the Rad-Away peeing. "They ought friggin' tell you the stupid thing's a diuretic!" He moaned as he laid against the back of the shack, thanking God that nobody could see him doing this from this angle and looking at the deflated "RadAway" bag. "Why the hell isn't there a warning label!? Don't tell me the FDA woulda just shrugged their shoulders at a big design flaw in a RADIATION CURE!"

Or maybe they would in this universe. Nick knew also that the Fallout universe had screwed up priorities. He'd heard from his friends who'd talked so much about it that the games had a history that diverged sometime after World War II and that the USA had been obsessed and afraid with not Russia, but China. A fear of the "yellow menace". As huge a history buff as he was, he had been loathe to learn more.

He had a bad feeling it involved finding out the number one song in the country was probably still "We're Gonna Have to Slap the Dirty Little Jap"!

Then he heard a horrible, heart-wrenching scream. He gasped, and quickly shoved his pants back on as swiftly as he could, and raced to the hill that overlooked the only real way out, for the only other pathways in any direction were blocked by rocky mountains of impassable ledges...and the endless expanse of desert he'd come from. He scrambled high up, up to the top of the hill, keeping himself flat to the dusty ground, cringing a bit from the taste of sand and mud and dirt that wafted into his mouth.

There was a glasses-wearing, well-cut, nice enough little African American young man who appeared to be college age, Nick guessed. One of the lenses in his glasses was cracked horribly...as had one of his arms. He was struggling to get to his feet, the ruined arm dangling uselessly in a bloody mess as it dripped-dripped-dripped onto the sandy ground below. A foul wind blew through the air, and Nick could smell the foul salty-iron scent of the poor black young lad's wound. He was wearing faintly faded pants, with a tattered, ripped-open white shirt that had some claw marks stretched across it, though the wounds on that weren't nearly as bad as his ravaged arm, and his backpack had flopped to the ground, bulging and too far away for him to make use of.

There were horned demons inching ever closer, clearly eager for a kill.

Nick could think of no better way to describe them. They were hunchbacked, faintly reptilian THINGS with huge, curving horns, long, humanoid arms and had foot-long razor sharp claws on each digit of their hands. They had equally sharp talons on their paw-like feet, with slightly curved-back legs. Nick faintly thought the legs were almost kangaroo-like, designed to make these...demons...leap tall distances in a single bound! They had piggy eyes and snouts, and spines running down their rather unnaturally long neck, and they looked hungry...and smelled fouller than they looked. Indeed, their smell reminded Nick of dead snakes that had been run over, their head crushed, guts and blood spilling out onto the road, left to bake in the heat of a hot summer day, pervading your nostrils.

The young man was going to die unless he did something, and fast. And he did the only thing he could think of. He stood up, and pointed upward dramatically, and sang, as loudly and proudly as he could…

"And your kisses lift me higher! Like the sweet song of a choir! And you light my morning sky! With burning love!"

The demonic things all stopped at once, and stared. Stared at Nick, slightly gaping, looking positively astounded and confused, as if they had never, ever heard anything make that kind of noise, say those words. The African American young man looked astounded too.

Neither party, however...looked as shocked as Nick did right now. Because nothing had happened.

Nothing.

No burst of flame. No surging fire to shoot forth at these demonic monsters. Not so much as a spark.

His powers had failed him, and he did the only thing he could now think of.

"RUN AWAY!" He cried out, barreling down the hill, actually right past the demonic things as they just stared, still shocked, and he raced off in the direction of some other hills nearby, the only other location he could see that wasn't all mountains or desert. "Run away, run away!" He yelled. "And you! Mister Black Guy! Get in the house over the hill I just came from!" He screamed back, tearing for the hills.

Not caring that he'd been called "Mr. Black Guy", the African American young man got to his feet as the monsters tore after the young man who'd just barreled past them, and he took his backpack, racing up the hill the vest-wearing young man had come from. Nick tore across the hills, but the things were gaining on him, his green shirt flopping about as he cringed and panted, feeling a stitch rise up in his chest, knowing he was dead, there was no way in HELL he could get away from these things-

Then he saw what he'd read about in that journal. The nest. There were some eggs and little, tiny miniature demons all slumbering around the eggs in a ring of stones that blocked a natural pathway. A pathway that, if you followed it...you could faintly see, about five or so miles away, Nick guessed...a faintly run down city. So these things were the "Deathclaws", huh? And this was their nest.

An awful, nasty idea popped into his head. Desperation seized him.

He did not want to die like this. But he couldn't think of anything else. He bounded forward, dived into the nest, sliding on his green shirt and blue vest and forcibly yanked the two sleeping baby Deathclaws up by their necks. He ignored their squirming, their cries, making sure he kept their arms pinned to their sides as he whipped around, and held them out for the obvious parents to see.

The Deathclaws had been only about twenty feet away. Now they stopped, and he saw their eyes bulge. He knew. He KNEW they were afraid for their young.

"Don't suppose you understand me?" He asked.

They just looked from him to their still-squealing, hissing young. Okay. They didn't understand WHAT he said. But they would understand HOW he said it, and he tightened his grip on the baby Deathclaws, their flesh feeling like a faintly bumpy lizard, almost like a chameleon.

"You keep away or I'll rip their goddamn heads off!" Nick roared out. "I'll bite their heads off! You get me?! I'll bite their heads off! Try anything and I'll bite!" With that, he snapped his teeth and the Deathclaws visibly shuddered, and moved back, their faces alight with fear.

He felt powerful. He felt like he was looking down on them from a thousand feet high and he smirked with pride as he slooowly made his way around the side, tightening his grip more, inching back...back in the direction he'd come. One of the Deathclaws tried to take a step forward…

He held his open mouth over one of the baby's heads and it halted in place, and stepped back, not wanting him to bite its child. He gestured with his head for them to head to the nest, and they shuffled over to it as he walked backwards more and more, up the hills, down the hills. The cries of the baby Deathclaws meant nothing.

Nothing.

He was soon back at the hill he'd been at earlier, when he'd first gotten their attention. They remained in the nest some distance away, eyes still wide.

Nick tightened his grip some more, looking down at the little baby Deathclaws and then their cries and hisses and screams became...something else. A yell.

A familiar, sickening, disgustingly horrific yell as he pressed a bit too hard into the area of their body where their lungs clearly were, and Nick went pale from how high-pitched and...HUMAN-like the cry was.

Nick had, at one point, loved catching frogs and toads. Adored it. He thought they were just so cute! He loved picking them up and feeling them and holding little peepers in his hands, watching their tiny little bodies softly breathing in his grip, and faintly feeling their tiny hearts pounding. They'd just been so cute and vulnerable and adorably squishy. He'd loved holding them and catching them every chance he got!

Until one summer camp experience when he'd caught one in a butterfly net as a camp counselor, as a C.I.T, and was playing with some of the kids. And the frog he'd caught…

SCREAMED.

It had been such a human sound, such a completely out-there, unusual cry that Nick had stared at it, looking as though he'd exploded the thing, not just caught it in a harmless 8 dollar butterfly net. Pure guilt had flooded through him and he'd immediately released the frog.

Now, hearing this baby deathclaw's cry, he thought back to that summer, and to the frog and he found himself dropping the baby deathclaw, reeling back, feeling sick to his stomach, all that power and smugness, the momentary rush of lording it over these things that had tried to kill him had gone. Replaced with disgust, and guilt, and revulsion. He raced down the hill, back into the shack he'd been in before, and slammed the door tightly shut behind him, sliding down the door and burying his face in his hands as he flopped onto his behind.

He felt petty and small and disgusting. He felt sick.

 _"Don't be an ass, you had to get out of there! That was the only way!"_ His mind was yelling.

 _"You were enjoying making them squirm._ _You_ _were the bully._ " His heart was quietly retaliating.

"...you alright?"

Nick was snapped slightly out of his disgust over what he'd done by the realization the young man he'd saved before was staring at him. He wiped his eyes on his arm and rose up. "S-Sorry, I...I've just been through a lot. I'm completely lost. I don't even know your name though, let's start there. I'm Nick. Nick Grey, and you?" He asked, holding his hands out.

"Black Guy." said the African American young man with a bit of a mischievous grin.

"S-Sorry about that." Nick said, deeply blushing, the other man laughing uproariously.

"Couldn't resist a little dig! I'm just kiddin', I'm kiddin'. My name's Darren Robinson."

There was also something odd about Darren. His arm was now in a sling, having used the med-kit on the table like Nick had but the sling wasn't what made Nick inwardly feel a sense of unease. Darren's eyes had a strange sort of defeated and depressed look that was faintly lingering in his features.

"I'd been on my way back to town to stay in a hotel, find a good spot to keep reading all these books!" He remarked, trying to remain chipper, holding up his backpack, Nick looking amazed. There was some food in there, sure, and a few bottled sodas, but mostly...it was packed to the brim with various books, some hardcover, some paperback. And he recognized one immediately, taking it out and holding it in his hand.

"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." He whispered, his hazel green eyes widening as his tone got quiet. "I used to love reading this. It was my second favorite behind the Silver Chair."

"You've read the others?" Darren asked, and he now looked surprised, and a little bit envious and impressed, and the faintly defeated look seemed to be wiped away as the scales fell from his eyes, a soft, childlike wonder beginning to glimmer in his eyes. "The library I got this from only had up to the Silver Chair, unfortunately the rest got ripped apart, couldn't be put back together." He said, his deep brown eyes looking at the book Nick now held in his soft hands. "Can you tell me what happens after "Silver Chair"?"

"Can you gimme one of those cokes?" Nick asked nervously. "I am just soooooo thirsty, and my mouth tastes like mud and RadAway.I didn't know drinking the whole bag would make me pee half my body weight away!"

Darren chuckled some more. "They really oughta put a warning label on them."

"I know, you'd think it'd be a blatant violation of FDA rules!" Nick grumbled as Darren handed him a "Nuka-Cola" and he popped the top open and began to slurp it down, finding the taste sweet and succulent to his taste buds. "I mean, who was running things up in Washington?! Is it all corporatists or something who think "laissez faire" is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Or Ayn Randian assholes? I would have thought president Clinton or the like would have-"

Then he saw Darren's stunned and confused expression. "What?"

"...who's Clinton?"

"...who was president after Reagan?"

"President Cain."

"...okay, I think you and I gotta have a bit of a long talk." Nick admitted quietly. "I'm just glad to see a friendly face I can get some answers from…"

"Ditto." said Darren quietly. "Because NOBODY outside of the library I was in knows who Ayn Rand is."

Nick suddenly realized he'd said something that, perhaps, he shouldn't have. Darren must have seen it in his face for he went on, "The library, Hypatia, was sealed away before the bombs fell, JUST before they fell. The only things that would know about Ayn Rand are in there, none of her books survived after she criticized Ronald Reagan! Nobody but nobody out here in the Wasteland would know about her unless they'd been to the library before or...or were from a Vault?" He inquired, raising a thin eyebrow. "So what is it? Have you been inside Hypatia or are you from a vault? I've heard tales of people who got sealed away just before the bombs fell, waking up decades later! Where are you from?"

Nick hesitated, then decided to go for honesty. Or at least, as much as he could. "New England. Connecticut." He remarked. "We're kinda "WASPY" up there, admittedly…"

"Oh, so you could afford to go into a nice vault, huh?" Darren grumbled. Nick decided it wouldn't be a good idea to correct him. Without the ability to manifest his magical power, Darren sure as hell wouldn't believe him. "So when did you go in?"

"...2006." Nick remarked.

"Oh, your family must have worked for West Tek, then!" Darren said. "You missed a lot."

"I'd love to know what I missed, but…" Nick looked down at the book in his hands. He could hear it calling to him. He wanted to lose himself in childhood memories and old, happier times.

He wanted to go to Narnia.

"Why don't I tell you about the Horse and his Boy?" He started with a little smile.


	2. Rising from the Grave

Though the days were hot and heavy in the Nevada desert, and the wind was often biting and bitter, the weeks that passed in that little shack were some of the happiest in Nick's life.

He had spent every single day just...talking about books with Darren. Darren would sit in one of the few chairs the shack had, or lie on the bed as Nick would go into as much detail as he could, trying to remember everything he could about his favorite stories. Nick would spin ornate worlds as if from thin air, trying to remember dialogue as firmly as he possibly could, wanting above all else to do justice to the books he so loved.

He'd spoken especially of the Silver Chair, and of the speech that the "mudman" character had given, the idea that the "real" world the Queen of the Underworld claimed was the only kingdom was a very poor one, far poorer than the "fake" one she decried, that the "fake" world was more meaningful, more truthful, more worth believing in.

Darren seemed to take that incredibly to heart, Nick had noticed that because of what he kept saying every time Nick made a comment on one of the books Darren had brought, and Darren had brought many. MANY. And quite a few of them were all about the government of the United States. Nick couldn't believe some of the things he was reading about the Fallout Universe.

"This...is...INSANE!" Nick had insisted at long last as he pointed down at a passage in "Vault-Tec's Hidden Truths", a book that Nick had assumed was conspiracy theory bullcrap. After all, it talked about the idea of an "Illuminati" esque society that had secretly built all the Vaults, that they were the ones who commissioned the darn things and they'd made them as social experiments and allowed funding to be gotten FOR the vaults right from Congress itself! Surely, that couldn't have been true!

But then Nick had cross-referenced it with a book that had gone into detail on the presidents long past, and he'd found a disturbing revelation. President Perkins had absolutely refused to sign such a legislation, saying that it "unfairly balances the budget on the backs of our poorest and most hardest hit citizenry". This same President Perkins had been arrested for jaywalking, leading to a period when his vice president, Dawlish, had temporarily been in charge and had passed the legislation!

And Dawlish, Nick noticed, had been in that "Hidden Truths" book, listened in a photo as being on the Vault-Tec Board of Trustees. This was clearly a conflict of interest.

"And it totally violates the Fourth Amendment, doesn't it?!" Nick had asked Darren as they'd sat together at the table, eating roasted giant mutant mole rat, Nick waving a leg slightly up in the air, one hand having the book open, righteous indignation a-blazing in his hazel/green eyes. "I mean...spying on people in secret like this and using the vaults as social experiments clearly violates the spirit of the Fourth Amendment! How could Congress pass this? And this...this "Enclave" actually tried to...tried to destroy everyone on the Surface?! Everyone who wasn't _Enclave_?"

"Oh yeah, it was a huge thing a while back." Darren admitted, chewing noisily on his extra crunchy mole rat meat, Nick noticing that Darren did not quiiiiite look you in the eye at first. He sometimes had to almost remind himself, occasionally a look would flitter over his face as if he realized "Oh woops, I'm not looking at you right!". "The Enclave evidently thought any person that wasn't in a Vault like they'd been was a mutant. Even if the most you had was an extra toe or just a slightly higher degree of radiation, you were "mutant scum", no better than a ghoul or super mutant freak."

Darren cringed. "I mean, I can GET why people don't like ghouls, they're damn nasty. Look like all the skin rotted off. Creeps me out just bein' around them. You can say whatcha like, but I think they're gross, and they ALL smell awful, just no helpin'. Comes from being so damn irradiated! But just assumin' every single mainland human's the same as them is…"

"As racist as thinking all black people are thugs?" Nick asked. He IMMEDIATELY regretted it, and he found himself dropping the mole rat meat and actually slapping himself in the face. " **Sorry!** Sorry, I am SO sorry, I-I didn't mean…" He began to say, Darren shaking his head.

"No." The African American young man remarked. "I'm right with you on that. It was damn bigoted, pure and simple. I don't mind you trying to make that point."

"I just...I wasn't _thinking_." Nick murmured nervously, going beet red in the face. He considered himself a good liberal, but he had a bad tendency to be a bit blind when it came to "responding properly". It came with the territory when you were on the "Autism Spectrum", having been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, Nick had for a long time not really shown good interaction with people, he'd say and do the wrong things, act out in strange ways. He still had issues, people told him he had a bad tendency of doing stuff like drinking out of the side of his mouth, or obsessing too much over Monty Python or-

He looked up. Darren wasn't looking him in the eye. He wondered if maybe…perhaps. Perhaps he too was on the Spectrum. Darren sighed a bit and kept looking at the floor a little. "I had been hoping to find a bit more...hopeful in the books about Congress and the Presidents, but I was amazed at how incredibly dumb and in Vault-Tec and the Enclave's pocket they seem to be. Over half the laws they passed seemed blatantly unconstitutional. How the big library the books CAME from came to be was started from unconstitutional bullshit!" Darren said with a dark glower. "They started burning books!"

Nick looked disgusted. The faintly overly crunchy, almost sunflower-esque tasting meat of the mole rat forgotten, he rose up. "No way! That CAN'T be! That…" He picked up the book on Congress and began reading through it as Darren's tone got bitter and his expression foul.

"Go to the part about them 'fighting sedition'." He grumbled. "At the start of the war against China."

Nick reached it, and his eyes turned into wide saucers, mouth slightly agape. "They can't **do** this!" He yelled out. "The government demanding books like that be burnt is a blatant violation of the _**FIRST FUCKING AMENDMENT!**_ " He snarled.

Darren stared. The kid before him had sung Everly Brothers at night under the stars to pass the time. He'd said stuff like "Dang" and "Frack". He looked as white-bread as it GOT, and he had been disgusted with himself for threatening a Deathclaw, a murderous killing machine. Yet hearing about the government demanding books be burnt for seditious material was so unbelievably horrific and foul to him, it had driven him to swear. And not just that, but the fuckin' f bomb at that.

"This is WRONG, damn it!" Nick snarled. "I can't believe-of-of all the-I...I!" He slammed the book shut and flopped onto the bed, now furiously scrunging his fingers through his hair. "This is so unfair! Why the **Hell** did people just accept this!?"

"I don't know why. But its the worst thing I've read so far about the old world." Darren said with a deep sigh. "I had such high expectations for it, but...almost everything I'd read keeps dragging me down."

Nick suddenly shuddered. Darren had that...that tone. Nick had not originally been good with reading tone, but years and years of social experience being hammered into him by every extreme circumstance imaginable had taught him to recognize when someone was on the verge of doing something awful. Darren's defeated, incredibly depressed tone always made Nick wonder if, had Nick not found him sooner...Darren would have ended up dead like the previous shack owner, a pistol in one hand and a bullet in the brain.

"Hey." Nick said quickly, rising up. "Hey, how about I sing another Everly Brothers song?" Nick offered quickly. Darren seemed to really like the old-time songs that Nick's dad had had on a huge stack of CDs way back in the day. In fact, he'd get sung to sleep on the Everly Brothers when he was very little, he knew their discography even better than Elvis, though the BEATLES came close.

"Um...how about something new?" Darren mumbled. He seemed to be losing himself in the mood, that awful, depressed mood and Nick cleared his throat, then looked over at the watch on his wrist. It was a special little watch, it played music! Tons of music, on top of telling the time. He couldn't get enough of it. He fiddled with it for a little while before finding a good one, turning it on.

"You guys get much Beatles over here?" Nick asked eagerly. He LOVED this one. He'd get to use Darren's harmonica for this one!

"Who?"

"The Beatles, man! They were bigger than Jesus!" Nick insisted, but then the watch, instead of playing "I Should Have Known Better", began playing a DIFFERENT Beatles song, one that made Nick whip his head in its direction, giving it a furious, angry look. He had always suspected the thing had a mind of its own, and a nasty sense of humor…

 _ **"Yesterday...all my troubles seemed so faaar away! Now it looks as though they're heeeere to stay, oh IIII believe...in yesterdaaaay!"**_

"You asshole!" Nick snapped at the watch, angrily giving it a BITE in irritation before fiddling with the controls, switching it to something more peaceful. "Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup! They slither while they pass, they slip away, across the univeeeeerse!" Nick sang along, Darren slowly getting into the bed, and gently lying down on top of the sheets, closing his eyes, his chest slowly rising and falling, letting himself be lost in the song.

Nick kept gently singing, Darren's chest rising and falling more slowly, more peacefully until, at last, the song came to an end, and Nick waited, a silence stretching out, long and full, until, at last…

"It's a good song." Darren said, as he reached down into the bookbag he'd brought, and pulling out another book, this time one that said "Your Employees and You", with a stupidly cheery "Vault Boy" on the front. Clearly some kind of Vault-Tec employers manual, Nick noticing Darren had an UNMARKED book in the bag-

No, not fully unmarked. There were some scratches that Nick faintly recognized on the upper right hand side. Oh, a journal. Darren turned onto his side, opening up the employee manual and deeply sighing. "Ugh. Just...ugh. Wish we had more songs like that where I lived. Just stuck with the same thirty something country songs from Mojave Radio. You're lucky, being rich enough to afford to listen to THOSE songs."

Nick inwardly cringed. "I don't know why more people wouldn't bring the songs over to the west, there's a lot of great ones people overlooked."

"No kidding"." Darren grunted. "The music scene's abysmal here. "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" was a top ten hit song in fuckin' FEBRUARY." The college-aged African American moaned, deep brown eyes closed tight. "Evidently the Mojave thinks whistlin' teeth is a laugh riot!"

"A few replays of "All You Need is Love" would do the desert a lot of good. Nothing can't be improved with a bit of Beatles!" Nick insisted. "So where DID you grow up?"

"Novac. Rather small town. Built around an old motel, hence the name." Darren remarked. "I was born in a motel bathroom and everything, and my dad, a ranger, struggled to make due. But it was hard, since...well...it ain't the best salary, to be honest, and he couldn't leave me alone too long. So his work hours got cut into. I grew up not knowing how to read or write cuz the most the hotel had was some stupid magazines. Wasn't until I got brought on a work trip to his office in New Vegas that I got to get a look at this old bookcase."

Darren's tone seemed to perk up, and he began to describe it vividly, voice clouded with memory. "It was huge and mahogany and beautiful. The wood all swirled and curved along as you reached out and plucked a book of its thick shelves. First one I ever read was this little book called "The Big Friendly Giant"."

Nick's eyes went wide slightly. "Roald Dahl? I LOVED Roald Dahl!"

"He's such a magical author." Darren admitted. "I was drawn into this strange tale about giants and I brought the book home. Then another...then another. When Mom wa sdoing these archeological digs to try and find pieces of the Old World we could sell or use, she'd take me along with her and I'd bring some books. Between them and what we kept digging up, we'd always be seeing these glimpses of a different world. Of a time before the bombs. Bits and pieces of what was real mixed in with what wasn't, and I wanted to know more."

Darren sighed. "Dad told me a lot of tales too, heard them from HIS dad. All these stories about the Golden Era of the Old World, and of cars that almost drove themselves and these big, giant computers and...and it was amazing. I wanted to know so much more, and then! THEN I heard tales of this big library. Ah, but that's a story for another time."

Nick pouted a bit. Darren never quite told him everything about Hypatia. He would occasionally hint that there was something important he wanted to do, something he'd left behind that he wanted to get back to, perhaps a book he'd been unable to finish reading, but he also seemed a bit...nervous...whenever Nick brought it up.

Maybe it was a book about some kind of fetish. Nick wouldn't blame him, people could get easily worked up over that sort of thing, but he wouldn't have judged after all he'd seen. Shrugging, Nick got up. "I'm gonna go for the town again, try and get some more supplies."

The Deathclaws had stayed away from Nick. They'd grown to fear him ever since that one nasty incident where he had almost killed their children, and they eyed him with distinct uneasiness and terror in their piggy little eyes. Because of that, it had been Nick who'd headed into the nearby town of Nipton, a rather unpleasant place the brown-haired youth hated being in. He only spent as much time as he could stand, JUST to get them more supplies.

Nick had been lucky, he'd had a few measly Earth dollar bills in his pants pocket in the back, and thank goodness, people viewed "Old World" money highly. But then he'd had to resort to scrounging, and learning that people valued bottle caps as currency had been...a bit insulting at first.

He'd tried his luck in town singing. He'd had a little hat up and was singing by the nearby bar to try and earn a bit of money and people had just tossed bottle caps inside. He'd eventually gotten annoyed that half the cap was full OF caps and had been about to toss it into the trash when he'd overheard a loud argument from the bar.

"I AIN'T PAYIN' TEN CAPS FOR THIS SHIT!"

Nick had gulped and quickly barreled into the nearby alleyway, and kept the cap full of caps tight to his chest as it quickly rose and fell, and a furious and beaten-up man in mohawk and a dark vest was thrown out of the bar, right on his face. He skidded, his nose slightly broken and bleeding everywhere, his face muddy and darkly glowering at the bartender, who had a gun pointed at him as his friends nervously ambled out to follow him, Nick stuffing the cap to the side behind a trash bin and trying to make himself look small. It failed since he was 6'2, they gave him a dark look as he watched them shuffle off.

"The fuck YOU lookin' at?!"

Nick shrugged nervously. "N-Nothin', sir." He said quietly, looking away, but the man's ugly, nasty look and the drunkenness emanating from him in waves had made Nick suspect the man didn't believe him. It was lucky the bartender had noticed Nick DID have caps and had offered to give him a "free drink on the house" as a sign of his "courtesy"...and to make Nick pay him for more lovely drinks.

Well, Nick DIDN'T drink, but since Darren did, he'd bought two Nuka Colas just about every day and two beers, and he'd been chatting it up with the bartender quite a bit about he and Darren just hanging out, alone. He'd bragged about taking on the Deathclaws, he'd sung for the bar, everyone seemed to love him, to think he was real brave.

Things had been going well. The bar had almost made Nipton bareable, because otherwise it was a rotten place. The people there had a sort of sleazy air about them, a miasma of oppression seemed to linger around. He could find NO children, strangest of all, and...the women seemed to be oddly…

Beaten. They didn't look him in the eye. They kept glancing away from him. And quite a few of the men would shamefully glance away. That, combined with how poor the upkeep on the town was, so poor that it was not uncommon to find rats mating right in the middle of the general store, made Nick hate staying in Nipton.

And he'd had no idea of what was coming when he'd decided to try the Sarsaparilla one day.

"What the heck!" He remarked aloud to the bearded bartender as the few other patrons in the bar chuckled and guffawed, and Nick held up the brown bottle of "Sunset Sasparilla". "Why not? I love root beer." He said, the bartender's blue eyes glittering with delight as Nick uncorked the cap of the brown bottle and lifted it up. "You say it's a best seller?"

"Our best!" The bartender remarked with a grin. "Well, truthfully, the LADIES seem to love it more than the men, always makes them swoon. But hey, I've got a liking for it myself too, so…" He shrugged a bit. "Give it a try. If you like root beer…"

"Why not?" Nick remarked. "I mean, doesn't cost any more than the Nuka Cola." He said, giving the guy five bottle caps and downing a swig of the sarsaparilla with a GLA-GULP. Hmm. Tangy, but robust! Not bad at all! No, not bad at all. So he kept drinking from it, even as a faintly...swimmy feeling sank into his head.

...a VERY swimmy feeling. A…

"Aw Dang." Nick realized aloud, as he collapsed off the bar stool, suddenly being clued in to the fact he'd been poisoned. The world around him was growing dark and cold, and he was only very faintly aware he was being dragged...dragged into a back room BEHIND the bar…

Nick awoke with a start. He found himself chained to the wall, a manacle around his wrist, and he gasped at the sight around him, astounded...and horrified. He was in an eight by ten room, of absolute grey steel, with a few others stuck to the wall as well, a man and a woman, all looking dejected and one was nursing a black eye.

"What...what's going on?!" Nick asked, his mouth agape. His head was no longer swimming, thank goodness. He felt all-too sober.

"We're going to be sold into slavery." The black-haired man in front of him mumbled. "That's what they do to all visitors to Nipton, and to, well...half the women here. And all the children. Ugh...my HEAD..." He grunted.

Nick's insides turned to ice. He stared in amazement and disgust, mouth half open as the door slowly slid open, the bartender smirking darkly at them all, holding up a pistol. "Get a move on!" He remarked. "Up, up. I know how hard it is, but you can stand up at least, I didn't give you THAT hard a dose." He remarked with a smirk. He gestured for them to rise up from the floor, as the woman and man groaned a bit, Nick deciding to play along, pretending to rise slowly up from the floor.

Just play dumb. Play stupid. Slur your speech.

"You...d-drugged me…" Nick muttered out. "If there weren't five of you in f-front of me…" He grumbled. "UGH…"

"PFFT. Barely gave you a full dose. Lightweight like you who can't handle one beer couldn't handle a full dose. And you're still seeing five?" The bartender sneered, undoing the others manacles and kicking them through the doorway with his foot, before turning to Nick.

But the minute he undid the manacle, Nick HEADBUTTED him as hard as he could, and then wrapped his arms around the man's neck, and wrestled him to the floor, tightening his grip har. The bartender was now sweating up a storm, his neck pale, Nick glowering balefully. "You're gonna freakin' DIE for this!" He snarled, and he then BIT into the man's neck.

The man let out a horrified cry...and then passed out, Nick letting go of the man's neck with his teeth. Geez. He hadn't even bitten him that hard! Rising up, pocketing the pistol, he headed out to the man and woman. "Listen, get behind me, he probably's got some friends waiting." Nick suggested, the two groaning, still barely conscious as they followed him down a long, dark hallway, moving towards a doorway, Nick hearing some faint murmurings. The bartender's friends were just outside a set of double doors not too far away…

Then loud, angry yells. And a cry of "OH CRAP". And Nick recognized the voice of someone very, very distinct. Someone he knew.

"Make me pay extra for your shitty beer?! See how you like it when its all burned up!"

"RUN!" Nick gasped out, realizing what was going on, grabbing the two other prisoner's arms, forcibly tugging them through the door. Sure enough, the entire bar was now in flames, burning and sizzling, the air choking and foul, and it was hard to see more than a few feet in front of him! Nick put an arm around the shoulders of each of the other prisoners, moving them as best he could towards the faint feel of wind, towards the exit, coughing and spluttering. His lungs were burning, his eyes like being stabbed by knives, but, at last, he'd made his way out of the bar, and collapsed on the dirt outside, hacking and spluttering…

Before a new worry came to him as he looked up, seeing the slightly stunned-looking mohawked man that he'd seen before. The man looked at his buddies, grinning a bit, Nick noticing that the mohawked man…

Had a bookbag. A very familiar backpack Nick recognized.

"Where did…" He murmured, blinking his eyes slowly. "That backpack, wh-where…"

"Got it off a dead black dude." said the mohawked man with a chuckle, Nick's face falling, his body seizing up, his expression full of horror and terror.

No. NO, NO, NO.

"Awww, was he a friend of yours?" said the mohawked man with a bit of a sneer on his bearded face. "Well, his shit's OURS now. Not that it meant much, I mean...the fuck good is all those books? At least you had a couple bottle caps and some nice med supplies." He remarked, KICKING Nick squarely in the chin, knocking him back, making him flop next to the other prisoners as the mohawked man pulled out his pistol and chuckled softly...before he turned the handle up. "Nah. Don't wanna waste bullets on you."

Nick was faintly aware of something smacking him hard in the skull. And he remembered nothing more.

…

…

…

...Nick awoke with an even worse state, and he looked around. He head was pounding, throbbing, and he clutched his skull, feeling blood. LOTS of blood flowing forth. He panted and heaved, his head feeling even more swimmy than before for a few moments, until he saw...he saw what laid next to him. The two prisoners looked almost as bad as he FELT! He quickly took off their shirts, cringing, panting and heaving, wrapping their busted-open heads in their shirts, and began to carry them up, lifting them onto his shoulders.

The shack. He had to get to the shack. AWAY from Nipton. Away from these...these awful people who were slavers, and...and to Darren. Darren could NOT be dead, he couldn't. He COULD NOT be dead.

"Come...on!" Nick grunted. That manta, that prayer, it coursed through his mind. He kept trudging along, across the sands, some people scampering away from him, his expression having that same horrific resolution the Deathclaws had seen. Some folks peered out their windows, then slammed the blinds shut. Others hid behind barrels and trash bins.

He didn't care. He hoped he never saw them again. He wanted a bed. He wanted to set these people down somewhere safer, and to find Darren.

Don't be dead.

 _DON'T BE DEAD._

Yet even as he slugged his way along the dirt...past dead, bullet-ridden corpses of Deathclaws...even the children…

He knew.

There was a distinctly bloody, horrific splatter of blood outside the shack. Inside...was a ravaged wreckage of a room, several books torn to shreds, Darren's journal included, and...the "Chronicles of Narnia" in chunks on the side. Nick put the man and woman down on the bed, and then barreled out, racing along the bloody pathway, up a hill, towards a big chunk of rock where a single tree was situated on the other side, and then…

He saw Darren. Darren, who's life was bleeding away from his blown-open chest, who was looking up at Nick with a bit of a sad, small smile.

"You're...hurt."

" **Looks** worse than it is." Nick insisted fervently, kneeling by Darren. "Really dude, your...your chest is open, man! I-I think I can see your heart!" He screamed out. "Oh God, oh God, I...what do I do?! They took all the med supplies, I…" He began to take his shirt off, to try and wrap it around Darren's chest, to stop the bleeding, something, ANYTHING-

Darren smiled a bit more. "I'm glad I got to meet you." He said and this time...he did look Nick in the eye. "Because...it showed me that...I was kind of right. There was something beautiful in the Old World. People just...weren't looking in the right places. So they couldn't see it."

"What do you mean, Darren?" Nick asked, his voice cracking, faint. He had SEEN people die before, yet...he never, ever could get used to it. And he didn't want to.

"Going to the Library felt...felt like a dream. I got to learn so much. You should go there…" Darren murmured, his voice getting fainter. "It's beautiful in there. Like...like a little slice of Heaven. Every shelf was like a voice from the Old World trying to speak out...and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. It gave me a dream." He whispered. "I...I want more songs."

His body was getting cold. His eyes were drooping.

"I want more...people reading...Narnia. I know it's...made up. But...that made up thing...seemed a great deal more important...than the real world. And I...wanna stand by that play world."

"Darren-"

"Just...do-do me one thing. Try and...make sure...the library gets...opened. Convince...them. Convince...Arthur."

And with that, Darren Robinson breathed no more, and Nick was left staring quietly, and emptily and sadly at one of the only friends he'd had in a world he knew so little about. And he felt alone, and scared, and like a little child who wanted to go home.

Nick didn't know what to do.

And that terrified him. Darren had been something to hold onto. He had been a tether, a rock. Having SOMEONE to bounce all this off of had been of endless comfort to him. Especially since Nick thought he could see a bit of himself in Darren. But now…because of that…

"That mohawked murdering sack of feces." Nick whispered balefully. He felt pure, raw, hatred and fury, like some sleeping serpent, rising up inside him, spitting venom out his mouth as he rose up. He wanted to hit something, and keep hitting it until it screamed or broke. Something, anything, he-he…

And then he realized he was gripping Darren's shoulder too tightly, and he felt sick again, and he began to cry and cry, sinking his face into Darren's now near-broken shoulder, and wishing he could just go HOME.

But he couldn't. He didn't know why. He didn't know why he had been sent here. He always seemed to come to a world to help it, to help people, to make it a better place somehow, in whatever small way he could, but...he felt like he'd failed. Darren was dead. And the murderer was probably miles away and he'd never catch him and-

The library. A thought was now rising in Nick. The only thing he could cling to.

Darren had said the library had had so much of the Old World in it. So many beautiful books. A library unlike any other. It had been his dream. He wanted the library open to everyone. He wanted Nick to "convince Arthur" to open the library. Surely, that had to be why he was here. It had to be the library! After all, if whatever had sent him here had wanted him to save people's lives, surely...SURELY it would have let him keep his powers! Right?

...right?

The library sounded unique and special. And it had given Darren a dream. This world, Fallout...seemed so broken and beaten and...DARK.

It needed dreams again. If the library was open, then maybe...they could begin dreaming again. Maybe more children could start reading stories about giants and magic, about lions and witches and wardrobes. About strange and beautiful fables.

So Nick rose up, bringing Darren's body with him, back to the shack to bury his friend...and to read that journal. He had to know. He had to know where the library was. Where HYPATIA was. It wasn't long before he'd found the journal, and was reading through it.

Well...at least, he TRIED. It was quite clear that though Darren could read, his writing skills were lacking. It made sense, he'd not had a book in his hands until he was what, 9? Ten? It took a while to learn to write. So Nick tried to make out what Darren's words said, and he cringed a little as he gazed at the pages.

"I learned a lot today!" And genitalias had been written all over the back of the sheet.

"Oh, Darren." Nick chuckled, shaking his head, trying not to laugh as he kept reading. Dicks, dicks, dicks, dicks... **so** many dicks! He almost found himself laughing, what...what was WRONG with him?

Another page. "Sometimes I don't know what to do with all this knowledge. When I think back to the stockmen at the NCR, I can't imagine what they could do with it. They wouldn't even care about any kind of ramification, any kind of long-term consequence, they would simply use it." Nick cringed. Harsh.

Another page talked about how Darren had found this really impressive, big gun...only for his mother to blow it up. And she'd said that bringing out weapons that could burn down entire towns, well "there should have been some rule against that". But then another page made Nick feel...a shudder dig into him.

"I'm getting tired of playing dumb. They probably think I can't write or read a single word before I came to their library, when I've been reading since I was about 7 thanks to that little NCR bookshelf. And been keeping a **journal** since I was 9! Faking illiteracy led to a comfy stay, but didn't net me as much rewards as I'd hoped. I know they got weapons. From what I've gathered, the access is in the southeastern corner, first floor. Secured, but it's there. There's got to be a way in. I can't pick the lock, and no terminal's connected to it...and I'm getting sick of this place. Knowing I'm here, trapped with the dead, and with Arthur always watching...always watching. ALWAYS. I'm getting a bad feeling. Time for me to leave."

Nick cringed even more. This sounded so...mean spirited and cynical. It was as if all the hope and dreams had been stomped out of this version of Darren, a version far different than the one he'd grown to know over these past few weeks. But the next page made him even more disgusted and horrified. The pen markings in the journal had been scribbled in with such ferocity, the words almost bled over onto the other page behind it.

"The library's a serious blow to the morale. Pops raised me on such beautiful tales of the Old World. Technology and progress and enlightenment and whatnot. The more I goddamn read all those goddamn BOOKS, the more I see how petty and vain it all was!" Nick read aloud. "What's even more depressing is our civilization's trying its utmost to pick up the Old World's trail where it was, going straight ahead for the same wall it crashed into! And nothing I read makes me think we'll ever learn from our history. Since I've been here, I'm asking myself how much better off we survivors would be if there wasn't so much of the Old World relics to keep us down! They even got a book on how to lobotomize workers to make them more efficient for fuck's sake! Time to hit the bottle!"

Nick put the journal down. He did not want to read any more. Suddenly he felt almost as awful as he'd been minutes earlier, crying into Darren's dead frame. Hearing these words...it sounded as though Darren would have most likely blown his own head off if someone hadn't come along to blow him open. Yet at the same time, Nick felt a tiny bit of relief. Meeting him had clearly made Darren hope again. Dream again.

It sucked out here in the desert. Out in the wastes.

But maybe the library could make it suck less. If HE'D been able to rekindle someone's spirit again just with a bit of music...maybe the biggest library in the world could rekindle the spirit of who knows how many generations?

It was the only hope he had. The only idea he could think of. And he would cling to it until forced to let go. Rummaging through the journal, he found the location of Hypatia. It was Northeast, to the east of Novac, not far from where Darren had been born. It wasn't too far off.

He'd leave soon as possible. The man and woman from earlier were still fast asleep. He sighed a bit, hoping they'd be okay, and decided to start a fire, cook a little dinner and then head out. If he kept walking, he'd probably reach Novac in about four hours walk, maybe three if he was lucky, and didn't encounter anything unpleasant. He could rest up there. Maybe even find Darren's family, if they were still there.

Nick made his way outside, and headed for the dead bodies of the deathclaws, cringing a bit.

This was gonna suck. He took a deep breath, using one of the bigger one's claws to slice huge chunks of death claw flank off. He had a feeling deathclaw meat wouldn't taste like chicken. And about half an hour of cooking later, he was proven right.

"RRRGGHHH."

Not one bit. In fact, it tasted like eating very, very rough, chewy pork that was far too spicy. Still, at least it was filling. He could thank God for some small mercies. After eating every last chunk of it, he finished his meal, and quietly gave a final, sad look back at the little shack he'd spent so many weeks in. He thought of the nights looking up at the moon, back lying against the shack, singing Everley Brothers songs with Darren. He thought of reading deep into the night with his friend, and of the face...the face of someone who had seen their dream die, and then slowly crawl back out of the grave.

"...bye, Darren." Nick murmured out, as he hit the road, and headed for Hypatia, as a cool autumn breeze began to mercifully cascade over the Mojave.


	3. The Book of James

**_Author's Note: By all means, don't hesitate to leave a review. I shall never improve without it, and it really makes my day to read them. We authors live for such feedback. Sorry for not updating this sooner. I'm regrettably freaking out over potentially losing my school job. Real life must always come first._**

* * *

 _Years before the nuclear catastrophe, a handful of wealthy men and women grew increasingly worried by the political unrest across their countries. This congregation, scientists, professors, artists, all felt the need for a place where history and culture could be preserved, safe from those who would destroy it for its seditious content. And so they pooled their resources in the hopes of creating such a place, free from the volatile swings of political agendas…_

Nick had been sure this was the place from what he'd learned of Darren's information on the library. The place known as "Hypatia" was somewhere within the caves that now stretched out before him, with only the bioluminescence of faintly glowing greenish mushrooms providing soft light for him to navigate the path ahead by. Nick walked deeper and deeper into cooler and cooler depths, blinking a bit, seeing the light was slightly expanded up ahead, and peering through the dark depths.

Sure enough, he was greeted by a large collection of glowing mushrooms...all of which had grown up around a small host of wooden crosses that stuck up in front of several broken-down robots. They were round robots, with little eyestalk sensors that had once glowed a bright yellowish/orange but were now dulled by synthetic death, suspended up on segmented limbs of steely dark grey, with the central bodies more of a silvery color. There were some additional bulging sensors popping up on the robots, and Nick knelt down, feeling over the cold texture of them, slightly confused.

It was...odd for someone to have "buried" these robots. He didn't think those in the Fallout universe really cared about robots enough to give them a grave with crosses and everything. He looked to the left, seeing the entrance to the vault, the entrance, presumably, to the library, and stood up, walking over to its enormous, gear-shaped metallic doorway, pulling down the lever on the console nearby.

With mighty CHUNKA-CLUNK-KLAK noises, the thing began to roll open, and a voice rang out from an intercom embedded into the console. "Oh, is there somebody out there? How unusual. I'm getting a very strange reading from whatever computer you've got with you. Is it a Pip-Boy?" It inquired, this voice sounding very smooth and knowing, reminding Nick of a late night news anchor. The kind of authoritative, trustworthy voice that you couldn't help but heed.

"A what?" Nick asked, his tone confused, blinking stupidly. "Dunno what a "Pip-Boy" is, I just got a watch."

"A very fancy watch, from what I can make of it. No reason to continue this conversation through an intercom, though. Please, come inside!" The pleasantly cheery voice intoned.

Nick made his way through ANOTHER doorway, finding armored turrets on either side of him, and on either side of another door on the far end of a fairly long room, light fixtures gleaming above, and the faint glimmer of library shelves beyond slightly grimy, dusty windows that lined either side of the hall he appeared to be within. A single maintenance bot was hovering in front of the other turret set at the end of this place, and Nick was certain it was staring right at him. He approached it, smiling nervously and holding up a hand.

"Um, hi there?"

The machine, which was evidently trying to clean up one of the windows with a spray bottle of some substance and a rag, kept on with its work. It was as if Nick wasn't even there. Some wires were a-poking out from its left side, and its silver coating looked rather worn down and slightly dilapidated.

"Can you help me with something?" Nick asked. "Like...maybe tell me who built this place?"

"Please move along." The thing said in ANOTHER rather well-toned, knowing voice that was slightly more...stuffy...than the first voice. It reminded Nick of a college professor that didn't really want to get to know you unless he thought you had "potential". "If you have any questions, James, on the first floor, will be happy to answer." It told him, continuing to clean the window.

"Nevermind, then." Nick said, going to the door nearby, the steely thing rising up as he approached.

And as he stepped through a hallway and into the atrium beyond, passing by "hipster" esque lighting fixtures that looked like they belonged in a movie theater, he beheld Hypatia. He stepped into welcome, cool, blissfully pleasant air, and his mouth became agape at the wondrous sight that was unveiled before him.

It was, indeed, beautiiful. The largest, hugest collection of books he had ever seen. There were shelves upon shelves of books of every shape and size, all the colors of the rainbow, the light fixtures in the room casting a faint shadow of a singular tree in the center of the main atrium. The carpeting was rich and satin, silky to the touch, with ornate flowery designs of crimson and faded gold, and the books…

The BOOKS. Nick ran to a nearby shelf, amazed. There was a section for True Crime, another for Biographies, yet another for Art, every single genre had its own huge, bulging, hulkish section of shelves. In fact, there was an enormous "Tower of Bablyon" esque structure to the back that gleamed high, high above, stretching up to the heavens and devoted to one thing and one thing alone: "Fiction". All of it was organized alphabetically, of course, one row was A, B, C,D, another was E, F, G, H, etc, etc.

And as he saw familiar book after familiar book, it was as if old friends were winking at him from across the room. He could see the Chronicles of Narnia, in both hard AND paper cover. He could see a copy of the Gutenberg Bible! Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" had golden lettering that glistened in the light of the atrium, Agatha Christie had almost teen feet of tower devoted to her works alone, the classics of William Shakespeare had a whole front of tower devoted only to them, each with beautifully hand-drawn covers!

"This must be what Harry Potter felt like, walking into Hogwarts for the first time." Nick whispered aloud as he approached another shelf, a shelf filled only with comic books, and he slowly took out "Action Comics #1"...the June 1938 issue, the debut of the one, the only, Superman. He was holding a piece of HISTORY in his hands. And it felt so...so warm and smooth and...safe.

Safe. That was how this library felt. Safe and cozy and natural. As if this was how people were SUPPOSED to be, this was how life was SUPPOSED to be lived. The world of the future, today. Everything warm and cozy, bright and glittering, yet with that faint antique charm, and a charming "retro" undertone running through it all. It brought back warm memories for Nick of the many days he'd spent in his own hometown's library, reading the Bearnstein Bears novels and Animorphs and the Chronicles of Narnia and all the Calvin and Hobbes comics he could get-

"Okay, let's do this right." He heard a voice say. That voice he'd heard over the intercom, and he quickly slid the comic book back, turning around. He was now face-to-face with a robot, a robot with a slightly bulky chest, a faintly domed head, on top of a slightly cumbersome "waist". It had segmented arms and legs, with spiky little "boot" feet, and three-pronged silvery clawed "hands", the "face" looking more like a set of drawers stacked on top of each other with, at the top, evidently a "brain" of sorts, a glowing bright CPU that glistened brilliantly like a torch. "Greetings! I am James! RobCo Protectron unit 13882 and personal assistant for Professor Cartright. How are you, and how may I help you?"

"Well, I'm Nick, and for starters...I mean, this IS Hypatia, right?" Nick asked nervously. "The library?"

"Yes, this is Hypatia, the library built by the professor in the year 2072. One of the most extensive compilations of human knowledge in the world. Well, provided other collections SURVIVED, of course." James the Robot added.

"So what was this place made for?"

"It serves several purposes. From educating the occasional visitor to helping the survivors of the awful fallout-"

"Title drooooop!" Nick laughed a bit.

James, though he had no face, seemed somewhat stunned before he added "...for helping the survivors of the awful fallout of the war build an enlightened society. To remain a beacon of unaltered knowledge of a bygone era and...a safeguard."

"A safeguard? From...what?

"Historical revisionism, among others. The victor rewrites history, that's how the saying goes, is it not? So we need to ensure that the record of past events isn't scrapped because of fluctuating political contingencies."

"I would have THOUGHT that...well, that sort of thing is **unconstitutional**." Nick said, sounding very much disgusted. "I've read about the government ordering the burning of "seditious materials", aka "books they didn't like" in the "olden days". How is that not a complete violation of the first amendment?"

"Regrettably, the victor also rewrites LAWS." James added. "Just as in times of war habeas corpus had been suspended, so were other laws, including vital protections of the first amendment. There were loopholes introduced to allow for such an atrocity to all great literature that were large enough to drive a truck through."

Nick felt that sense of anger rise up in him but he tried to suppress it, and to get refocused. "Do you get many visitors, then? I know you had at least one, Darren? He told me about Hypatia."

"Ah, yes. Darren Andretti Robinson. We have indeed received our fair share of guests in the past. In the last few years, aside from Darren...not so much." James confessed to Nick. "It would seem nightstalkers built up a nest near the front entrance to the library, dissuading most travelers from even getting near here."

"Night-what?"

"You've not heard of them? They're these rather unpleasant things that appear to be a hybridization between rattlesnakes and coyotes." James informed Nick, who looked a bit surprised.

"Another Enclave creation?"

James shook his head. "No, no. Not that we know of. It IS an issue we shall have to address eventually. But not as long as the war outside is raging, at least. Not that we could do much about it. We're programmed to stay inside and take care of the library."

"...um…" Nick wasn't sure how else to put it, so he went for blunt honesty. "Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the war DID end. The bad news is that the USA and huge chunks of the planet got so badly bombed that everywhere looks like it belongs in "Dune"."

James seemed to go deadly silent for a few moments, Nick was positively sure he had stiffened up. Then, at long last…

"Well. That's at least some relief that it really is over. None of the others seemed fit to mention it." He intoned. "I haven't the foggiest idea why. But if you'd like to stay here for a while, you are more than welcome to use our facility. Please, feel free to speak to Rolland upstairs, he'll gie you a room in our living quarters." James said politely. "That said, there are some rules you should be aware of during your stay here."

"Lay 'em on me." Nick offered.

"Treat the facility with respect. As long as your actions do not threaten our collection, no harm should come to you." James said, his tone sounding more...robotic, and cold, as he spoke.

"Okay, though...that kinda sounds…vague." Nick confessed. "And sort of...scary?"

"Sorry. I know I just dumped that on you like some kind of threat, but it really isn't. We just want your stay here to be as comfortable as possible." James added. "I'm just supposed to give all our guests a basic run-down of our rules. You know. "Rules and regulations"."

"Sure. But who was Professor Cartwright?"

James seemed to perk up a bit, his tone getting more cheery. "Back when titles were still relevant, he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chief Science Officer of the RobCo company. His domain of expertise was, as you've surely guessed, was artificial intelligence."

"So he could afford to build this place?"

"It was a well-connected intersection of resources, contacts and wealth. The efforts of five wonderful friends. Of course being in close relation with Vault-Tec's brass played a large part in his success." James added.

"Money talks." Nick chuckled. "But how many machines in here besides you have...well, personality?"

James actually chuckled. "A handful of us have a personality module that Cartwright designed for us. There's me, Helena in the medical clinic upstairs, Rolland in the lounge, and there's, of course, Arthur in the Computer Room."

Arthur. Darren had mentioned him. Nick would have to remember that. "Arthur is important, I take it?"

"He's our database." James confessed. "He's quite well-informed and very knowledgeable though not very...responsive. He's not much for communication."

Nick made a note to remember THIS too. "And I take it this place is self-sustaining?"

"Oh, yes. We've enough resources to sustain ourselves quite nicely, producing our own energy, recycling most of our scrap. And our Mister Handy units go out of the library to scavenge whenever needed."

"And it's a very lovely place, I have to say." Nick complimented.

"Yes, we have a VERY lovely facility here, I assure you. Besides reading, there's a movie theatre, a study and reading room, a laundry room, the borrowing service and the computer room." James added, sounding rather proud of himself and his library. "The second floor has our lounge, our living quarters, our cafeteria, Helena's library and the classroom!"

"A classroom?"

"For if we ever got children." James explained. "Families, you know."

"Did you?"

James seemed to sigh. "Sadly, no. No pitter-patter of little feet."

An idea came to Nick. "Do you, by chance, know where I could get a copy of "Dean's Electronics"? That's one of the books Darren told me I should get when he'd talk about the library, he said it's an exhaustive compendium of modern technology, that it might help me with my watch?" He inquired, pointing at his watch.

James now seemed flustered, stammering slightly. "Well, I...you...should...ask Rolland for any kind of "misplaced" books, I fear. And he's usually loitering around in the lounge on the second floor." He remarked.

"Oh, okay." Nick said, shrugging. "Alright."

"But now that the rules and regulations are taken care of, may I ask YOU a question?" James inquired, Nick tilting his head slightly to the side.

"Uh, sure! Ask away, my boy. Ask away!" Nick remarked.

"I DID hear from the visitors we had, Darren included, that the world outside is violent. If you got here despite having no outward weapons on you, I assume you can take care of yourself out there." James asked, his tone slightly more hushed than before. "Have you already killed someone?"

Nick hesitated. He had, a long, LONG time ago, killed. Years ago, trying to defend innocent lives. He'd fought supervillains and killed them in awful fights. And it had been one of the most disgusting feelings he'd ever had, the realization that he had taken a life. Yes, it had been murdering monsters he'd fought, yes, he'd even killed a literal demon before. And yes, he'd beaten up people so badly sometimes that they'd been close to death, all in the name of saving the world or the galaxy or his friends.

"How did it feel?" James inquired in that same somewhat hushed voice.

"Why do you want to know that?" Nick asked, and he was surprised by how...childish he sounded.

"My entire existence has taken place in this library. As such, I often have trouble relating to the world outside, the violence." James explained. "You could say I only wish to understand it better so I can understand our guest as well."

"It's…" Nick struggled to put it into words. "It's...a disgusting, awful, rotten, foul experience no matter why it's done, where it's done or HOW it's gone. Killing is...I…" He hesitated again. "...when you're in the heat of the moment, fighting someone, you're not exactly "thinking" so much as you're sort of on an "auto-pilot" of sorts. It's like running on instinct, almost. You just don't want to die, and you don't want the people you care about to die, and you'll do anything to make sure they don't happen. You just want to stop others before they can keep hurting you or the ones you love, and it's sort of like…" He sat down in a nearby chair by one of the room's desks and looked down at his hands. "It sort of feels almost unreal. Like you didn't really do it, like you're just a player in a video game, making a character move here, do this, that sort of thing. That it wasn't really YOU doing it. But you know it was. And even if you had to do it, had to stop someone, and killing them was the only way you could, you keep thinking "I should have found another way. If I'd been smarter or more creative or stronger, if I'd just been BETTER, I could have"."

"Do you ever stop thinking that?"

"...it sort of is like this...thing that will pop up in your head again and again every single time you're in another fight. An undertone that spikes up now and then. You probably shouldn't ever stop thinking that. You have to be...better." Nick finally said at long last as he held his head in his hands. "...it's hard. But as C.S Lewis once said, we need only retain our goodness to regain our innocence. Kind of hard, but anything worth doing is hard."

"That's what I believe too. A sad event no matter what the circumstances. I'm glad you said that." James said with a slight spring to his voice. "You seem like a very nice person."

Nick looked up, smiling a bit more. "Thanks." He said, his tone quieter than normal. "I'll...I'll talk to you later, I think I'd like to go lie down in the living quarters."

"By all means, make yourselves comfortable." James insisted. Nick smiled and held out a hand, James taking it in his gauntleted grip and shaking it. It was somewhat uncomfortable, but Nick didn't really mind. He smiled warmly back, and then headed for a nearby doorway. He was about to turn, to find the stairs heading up, but then he noticed he was very close to the "Computer" room.

He blinked a bit, feeling himself being tugged towards it, and the door slid open as he walked inside a rather messy sort of place. Scrap electronics laid all around along with papers, the supercomputer at the back of the room with its gleaming, shimmering, beeping and pinging lights had loud fans whirring through the air, there were too many shelves loaded up with fairly useless, dead machines…

The supercomputer had a plate of gold, named "Arthur" that was plastered above a green computer screen, a chair sitting in front of it. Nick decided to sit down, and smiled. "Um, hello. I'm Nick, and you are?"

It remained silent. Nick stared. "Um...can you answer me?"

Nothing. Still nothing.

"...why is it that you don't want to talk to me?" Nick asked.

"Long ago a young man with an extensive spiritual life made a pact with a spirit." said a deep, resonant voice that echoed through the room. A cultured, and slightly pompous voice indeed. "In exchange for his ability to speak, he learned an important, fundamental secret about the purpose of man. Of course, the moment he learned this secret truth, his voice was silenced for the rest of his life. Obsessed by this knowledge, frustrated by his inability to share it, he resigned himself to live the rest of his life in isolation."

Nick stared a bit, confusedly, at the machine as it simply went on.

"Years went by and solitude weighed heavy on the man's shoulders. He felt his sanity escaping his mind, like sand slipping through clenched fingers. So he decided to carve a piece of wood with the face of people he once knew, people he remembered. People he had loved. He would converse with those, in hopes of preserving some last shreds of sanity. He died eventually, leaving his collection of masks behind. Some say that deep within their frames still subsists a fragment of the hermit's vision."

Nick stared. Then he found himself saying…

"Wait a minute. If he could carve masks, then why didn't he just **write out** his secret for everyone to read? Wouldn't that have solved everything?" He found himself asking, sounding somewhat mortified. This hermit sounded amazingly shortsighted.

The machine remained silent. Nick groaned. "C'mon, you just talked to me. How did I make you do that?"

"A hermit once learned that by asking his questions to the mountains in the correct manner, the echos would bring him answers."

Nick stared stupidly at the machine again before, at last, sense began to dawn. "Ohhhhhhh. I THINK I get it. You only answer to open-ended questions, don't you?" He inquired, the machine remaining silent. "Okay, then let's try this. What happened to your master? Dr. Cartwright?"

"He died because his body could not withstand his own spirit; a spirit which already had troubles withstanding itself." Arthur intoned.

"...wow, that's...not helpful. Alright, what's the story behind the vault?" Nick tried.

"5 Friends caught in a diluvial rain sheltered under a tree, and pitched some money together. One of them faced the rain to go buy an umbrella. He survived the ordeal. Perhaps because he was as the only one gone when thunder struck the tree."

Nick thought about this. He remembered James had mentioned "Five wonderful friends". So Cartwright had been the one to "buy an umbrella" and he'd been the only survivor. Nick guessed the "rain" had been the nuclear hellfire that had bathed over the world, with only Cartwright surviving. It made sense. "What's James's story?"

"A testament. An heir. That is sometimes all that people need to leave this existence in peace."

"How about Mr. Rolland? That other robot James mentioned?"

"A writer of great renown had it all. Friends, family, wealth. He wondered why he couldn't write anymore. He despaired, he cried. He drank. Why, he yelled, while tossing away heaps of single-worded scripts. "Why? Why can't I write anymore?" "It's simple, my dear." said his wife, freshly awoken. "You're not suffering enough." She added: "I can help you with that."

Nick shuddered. Maybe Rolland wasn't someone he wanted to meet. "Um...what's...Helena's story?" Maybe the only lady robot in the library was nicer.

"Once upon a time a child had a music box he held very dear."

Nick shivered. He had a music box HE'D once held dear, a present from his grandpa. It played "Edelweiss". But when his grandpa had died, every time he opened the music box he thought of his grandfather's death, and it'd driven him to such despair he'd shattered the thing, breaking it against the wall in his grief.

"Though he loved nothing more than hearing the box's sweet melody, he wanted to know how its mechanisms worked. He knew that by breaking open the box, he could have a glimpse of what was inside. And perhaps comprehend, even just a bit, how it worked. Of course, he feared he couldn't repair it afterwards. Opening the box, and risk breaking it...or leaving it the way it was. Eventually...the child would make his choice."

Nick stared at Arthur, looking a little confused. So was Helena the sort of person who wanted to know how people worked? Well, she was in the medical clinic, a doctor, presumably. "Okay, what about…" He thought of the only other robot he'd met. "That maintenance bot out front?"

"A stone, used to whet a flint, which was in turn used to carve tools. Even discarded, the stone was as useful as it was in the first place." Arthur sagely informed him.

"Okay, so he's helpful?" Nick reasoned with a shrug. "What is your story?"

"The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me. Until only the mountain remains."

"That sounds like a poem. Who wrote it?"

Arthur remained silent. Nick sighed. "Okay, uh...thanks. We'll talk later, then. Bye." He offered, heading for the stairway, and humming a bit. For the MOST part, everyone here seemed very nice indeed. Maybe it wouldn't be so difficult to get Hypatia to be more open to the public after all. He'd chat it up with Helena and he supposed, eventually, Rolland, and then after getting some rest he'd explore the library a bit before talking to James about…

About…

Something had jabbed its cold claws into his spine, the door to the study slowly opening and closing, malfunctioning strangely, as a single light flickered on and off within a room that had a small computer on a desk at the far end. There were various books on shelves that lined the walls, books that appeared to be devoted to classical poetry and literature. A single, solitary lamp sizzled a bit as it kept unnaturally flicking on and off. Dozens of pages had been ripped apart, scattered all across the faded grey carpeting of the floor, and Nick knew...he knew something was wrong even before he looked to the right of the room, and saw it.

Saw the dead, skeletal hand faintly clutching a page of "Edgar Allen Poe" in its grip, all flesh and muscle and sinew long-since rotted away, leaving naught but bones. A bookcase had collapsed upon the poor unfortunate, a cane lying not too far away, along with a golden, gleaming Sheriff's badge, and a pair of crushed glasses on the skeleton's face.

Professor Cartwright had been dead for years, left lying there in a piteous state for God-Knew-How-Long. And he very clearly hadn't just passed away in his sleep. As Nick approached the bookcase and felt how incredibly HEAVY it was, he instantly came to a conclusion. Nobody weak enough to need a cane just to walk around could have accidentally pulled a bookcase down on top of themselves.

 _This man had been murdered._

Nick suddenly didn't feel so safe anymore.


	4. Hypatia's Handy Helper Helen

Nick stared in shock for a few more minutes, unmoving, just looking at the skeleton below him. His mind was racing with ideas and possibilities, all at a hundred miles an hour. He didn't feel safe, and he now feared talking to the other robots. Worse still, he was now afraid of being in the Libary. Someone in Hypatia was a killer.

Of course, that was an OPTIMISTIC idea, he reasoned. He had read dozens upon dozens of mystery stories, this could be a "Murder on the Orient Express" style tale, where EVERYONE did it. Of so many men, one is guilty, or innocent?

Worse still, the body was so degrated, with nothing but skeletal bones beneath a bookcase! No bugs or decayed flesh colors or anything to determine the exact cause of death like he'd seen from crime investigation shows. The human body wasn't a friggin' tree, you couldn't just cut through the bones to count the rings! How in the Hell was he going to figure out who did this?

There was only one thing he could think to do. He'd talk to everyone in the place. Try and find out when they discovered Professor Cartwright dead. See who had any alibis. Good, solid place to start. He supposed he'd talk to the robots he hadn't spoken with already, beginning with Rolland. Given how supposedly irritating and annoying Arthur had evidently implied he was, best to get it over with, like tearing off a band-aid.

Giving the skeleton a final, lasting look along with the crime scene, Nick headed up the stairs, towards the Living Quarters area, which had a small little lobby with various pantings set behind a desk...paintings not quite in the right place, some on their sides. There was a jukebox in the back of the room by the opening to a bathroom, a small dining room table, and behind the desk was a big yellow and grey Securitron robot with a cowboy hat atop his head, and a rather abrasive voice that made Nick think of the kind of jerkhole Seniors who'd bully the Freshmen at his high school.

"Oh, terrific! Daddy's boy let another bum in the door."

"You mean James? Why do you call him that?"

"Huh?" Rolland sound astounded. "You care about THAT? When did you take up an interest in the interpersonal politics of a bunch of soulless machines?"

"When did YOU become so obnoxious? Were you born an asshole, or did you work at it your whole life?" Nick muttered.

"Well, it's not my fault. I had abusive parents and they, uh...used to hit me." Rolland said.

Nick's face fell instantly on the spot. "Really?"

"NO, of course not!" Rolland said, laughing uproariously as Nick scowled darkly. "Wow, **you shoudla seen the look on your face!** What a weenie! Your face fell as hard as that Oriental's face did when I told her about-oh. Oh shit. I said "Oriental"." Rolland would have turned pale if he could have. "Oops."

"How come you've such a...unique "flair"? Which is a polite way of me asking, again, why you're such an asshole?!" Nick grunted darkly.

Rolland waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Look, mind your own goddamn business and go back to inhaling all the oxygen and jerkin' off to whatever else you filthy humans do. This is Library De Rolland. Don't steal any of my shit, okay? Looks like you can't read anyways, so I probably don't have much to worry about." Rolland remarked.

"James said you were the go-to guy for "special books"." Nick remarked. "He must put a lot of trust in you. Don't know why if you're this standoffish."

"Oh yeah. That's me. The go-to guy for "special books" right here." Rolland laughed obnoxiously.

"Okay, do you know where I'd find a copy of Guns and-"

"It's a goddamn library, how about you take a look around? Asshole!" Rolland said, clearly giving Nick a raspberry as Nick stared at him.

"...it's a LIBRARY. Hiding books defeats the purpose!" He remarked.

Rolland was dead silent for a few moments. He looked Nick squarely in the eye, yellowish visor into hazel green eyes.

"You know, believe it or not, I used to actually care about this place. It was my sole purpose in this existence, after all. So when I see a bunch of reckless neanderthals utilizing these books for the most distasteful of purposes, as well as wearing them out before any future generations can enjoy them, I decided it was best to put them away for safekeeping. So sue me!"

"I'm not interested in stealing anything." Nick remarked.

"You're not bein' honest. I can see your pupils dilating, your liar. We got seven books on polygraph machines alone. I may not be able to jack off, but I'm smarter than you! Ohhh yeaaah." Rolland accusedly growled out.

"Polygraph machines are famously unreliable." Nick said, staring back at Rolland. "Aren't their results generally not admissible in court and-"

Rolland seemed positively astounded. "Well, shiiiit! Looks like I got me someone who's brains haven't gone out the window. You've actually done some reading yourself on this stuff, huh?"

"Yes. I have. And I also promise, whatever I DO do, I'll leave that ugly hat of yours where it is...on the remains of your lost dignity." Nick added with a little smirk.

"Well god damn. I just got served. I can hear the two remaining neurons in your head bouncing off each other to come up with that line." Rolland said with a wry tone.

"I'm not interested in looting this place. I'm just glad to see a big library here. Especially since there's basically NO interest in books outside in the wastelands."

"Oh really? Cuz I see your gelatinous little eyeballs darting all around the room. You're looking at all my stuff. That plant? Mine! That painting?! **Mine!** " Rolland said, banging his hand against his chest. "That jukebox? Wanna guess? Yours or mine? ERRR! Time's up! _**It's mine!**_ "

"A bad attitude. Definitely yours."

"Well, what else wouldja like to talk about? I know! How about you're probably gonna starve to death cuz you won't be able to figure out how the kitchens work?" Rolland said, his voice positively pleasant. "Did you know that if you don't eat, the human body will consume its own muscle and tissue after a week or two? You'll probably eat your own shit at that point! What a fascinating read, that was!"

Nick's face began to scrunch up.

"Ooh, you don't look so good. C'mon, can'tcha take a joke? I would think you'd be able to, your every attempt to one-up me's been hilarious! Fuckin' KNEE-SLAPPERS!"

PRECISELY SIX MINUTES LATER...

"And now for the fish! The fish! The fish...down the face." Nick remarked, forcing the salmon entirely down Rolland's smashed-open visor, as two other Securitrons stood in the hotel lobby, just staring at the sight. Nick was sitting on top of Rolland, who was flopping around uselessly, pinned underneath the teenager's big, fat white ass. "And of course, can't forget the whitewash! Yes, the whitewash!" He added, holding up a large bucket of paint. "THe whitewash...over YOU." He said, spilling the bucket of white paint aaaaaaaall over Rolland's spluttering, furious, couldn't-believe-it-was-happening face. "And now, of course, the pie! The apple pie...right in the puss."

"Guess you broke into the kitchen after all!" Rolland said before his "mouth" got covered up by an apple pie smushed right into his face, James staring at all this before the other securitron, who was colored red and grey, interjected, pulling Nick off. "Please, let us all calm down."

"Sorry, sorry, I just...UGH!" Nick threw his hands in the air as Rolland dusted himself off.

" **Wow** , you are heavy. You must weigh more than 200 pounds! Lose some weight!" Rolland groaned, looking down at his food-covered, paint-sloughed-over form, as white paint dribbled onto the carpet and James deeply sighed.

"I'm really, super stressed out. I found a **_skeleton_** in one of the rooms, okay, and I'm freakin' out!"

"Ohhh. You saw that." Rolland, James and the other securitron robots all became silent as Rolland got far more subdued in his voice. "...okay, so you're freaked out over that, huh? I'd be kinda freaked too, I guess."

"I don't suppose any of you could tell me WHEN he died? I mean, it IS the professor, right? Cartwright?"

"Yes. He died 89 years and 5 months and 2 weeks and three days ago." said the evidently female securitron. "I would be happy to go into detail on that if it would calm you down. You seem to want answers."

"Yes. That'd be **immensely** helpful." Nick said. "Look, I'll be dead honest, I'm really, _really_ scared of all of you right now and I don't know which of you might be a killer. Or maybe if it was a human visitor or **anything!** So I'm all stressed out and I want some answers. Please!" He insisted fervently, as the lady securitron led him out of the room, down the hall and towards a medical ward, with patient beds, metallic dividers, a large mahogany desk that had a big green plastic T-Rex on it, and various x-ray pictures on the walls.

"Well, I'll help however I can. I'm programmed to treat a wide array of human traumas, including psychological ones. I'll help however I can. Please, sit." She insisted tenderly as he sat down in one of the room's big, plushy chairs. "I'll answer any questions you want. I am Helen, and I am here to help." The female robot offered.

"Thanks." Nick said, feeling a desire to trust this robot rising in him. She had a very personable, calm, almost motherly voice that made him feel relaxed. "I did kind of have questions about you and your fellow robots here. I'd like to know more. Like...you. Let's talk about you."

She almost seemed to blush. "Oh! I assure you, there's nothing much to know about me. I examine. I treat. I stitch." She said, her "hands" flying to her "mouth". "When I'm not, I try to develop my psychoanalytic skills. Rather difficult."

"How's it difficult?"

"It's frustating. I've ALL this knowledge, all theoretical knowledge about the human psyche yet I've not any personal experiences of human feelings and internal conflicts!" Helen confessed as she paced up and down in front of Nick. "It is like...having a blindfold on, preventing me from seeing something I've been touching for decades!"

"I get that." Nick said, thinking back to his lost powers and sighing sadly, hanging his head a little. "I'll...try and help, if I can." He admitted. It just slipped out, naturally. Helen turned back, and nodded at him.

"You are very kind. I'll take you up on your offer, sometime." she said, nodding her head.

"So you and the others seem to have very unique personalities." Nick admitted, tilting his head slightly.

"Oh, yes. We've all unique personas, and are capable of learning and evolving to better interact."

"How?"

"We can question what we've learned. We analyze and appraise and question what we know, and use it to build a new learning perspective. It's intuitive for you humans, but an incredibly complex process to A.I like us." Helen went on. "We've got to prioritize and value every new lesson, idea, concept! All through careful examination and contemplation. It is much like..." She hesitated, trying to find the right analogy, and then spoke. "Like a handicapped man, learning to walk with synthetic legs. We, in turn, are learning to think with a synthetic brain."

"Do you have the ability to evolve beyond the rules you follow?"

"Not exactly, we are all limited by our personalities. My own nuerocomputational matrix is programmed to be supportive, helpful and comforting. James is helpful and steady, though always good at asking questions, whilst Rolland is programmed to be obnoxious, disobedient, provocative."

"Yeah, I could tell. S-Sorry about the whole...um...freaking out at him thing. It was immature." Nick shamefully confessed. "But um...like...what happens when you get a clash of programming? When the rules contradict? Like, your rule to protect humans clashes with the rule to protect yourselves?"

"That is called a "grey area". It only arose once, truth be told. We had to defend ourselves against a gang of slavers." Helen admitted to Nick. "They were a threat, yet were also human. Repelling them without casualities wasn't possible. We ended up stuck in a loop. Our master had to provide us with a solution...bypass the protocols and defend the library, by killing the invaders."

"Why did he program you the way he did?"

"Well, though he did not openly admit it, when we'd talk about it ourselves, it's rather clear he made us so he wouldn't feel lonely. To this day...I ask myself if we succeeded." She said, her tone slightly dropping to a sad murmur near the end.

"I'm sorry." Nick said sympathetically. "But you seem pretty human to me, if it makes you feel any better."

"ALMOST human is still a good deal far away from being one. Simply being able to imitate human emotions is not quite good enough. I read a poem. Recite it perfectly. But I shan't get it's emotional significance."

"I get that, too. The "can a Robot write a symphony? Can a robot make art"?"

"Oh, you've read those books too?" Helen's tone seemed to light up with joy. A sense of nerdy glee entered her tone. "Weren't they wonderful?"

"Speaking of Isaac Asimov, um...did the professor put in a "zeroth" law in you? Any hidden protocols?"

"Oh no, no." Helen shook her head. "...well, as far as I know! But the only thing that can make us bypass our protocols is a direct order from our master, and he's deceased."

"Could I ask you about...James?" Nick inquired, rubbing the back of his neck. "What's with his weird questions? "

"Sigh. He couldn't resist. I've TOLD him about this, that it would make guests uneasy. He's programmed to ask all kinds of questions and be curious of the outside world and people. So our master decided to make him the first to talk to new guests. Our "leader" in a few matters, yes. He's the one who makes the long-term decisions. I admit, I've suggested, if he truly was so curious, to go out and see the world outside himself. However, he can't. It would leave this place unattended and a simple securitron robot like ourselves would be easy pickings for scavengers."

Nick quietly sighed, hanging his head. "Yeah. You're right about that. But still...does James have some morbid curiosity about death and murder?"

"All of us are programmed to try and understand what we cannot grasp. Concepts that are intuitive to you like dreams, or sensations or feelings are elusive. There is a chasm between humans and us. We're constantly chasing concepts that elude us." Helen told him.

"And James is that even more so? Okay. How about Rolland? Why in the name of everything good and sacred is he so...so...UGH?!" Nick tossed his hands in the air, rolling his eyes. "The guy is 100% pure bag of dicks!"

"Well, you see, all of us were more or less yes men. Our master needed someone to push him out of his boundaries from time to time. To keep his fighting spirit alive. And, I imagine, someone to ensure future guests had some modicum of patience or self-derision."

"I need to work on that, I've got anger problems." Nick quietly admitted.

"I imagine handling Rolland will be difficult for you, then. Just try and remember that whatever you tell him, he'll use it at the first occasion to **irritate** you." Helen offered to him. "That said, I remember two people averted his vigorous badgering. Our master, who got more and more amused by his tauntings and just shrugged them off with a laugh, and the other one was Piper, our first guest."

"Oh? What was she like?" Nick asked, leaning back in the chair, yawning a bit.

"Strong character. She'd seen many things and lived a whole lot of experiences outside. She survived the nuclear holocaust too." Helen confessed.

"Ooooh. Nice!" Nick remarked. "And what's the deal with his cowboy getup?"

"Well, as you know, our master designed Rolland to be offensive and irritating in a wide variety of ways. And one method he was MOST proficient with: impersonation. Seeing how we resemble each other physically, the only way our master could differentiate us at the time was our voice modules. But then Rolland realized he could MIMIC me and James's voices and he'd pass himself off as one of us, acting like he was malfunctioning. When he realized ol' Rollo was mocking him all along, he put a cowboy hat and boots and star on Rolland so he'd never be able to fool him again. AND he painted the rest of us to give us some visual identity!" Helen said as Nick chuckled a bit, Helen walking over to the desk, standing by it...and the little dino on it.

He stared at it for a moment, then asked "What's the dino for?"

"Ah, that's a special something. Guess what it's about! What do you think it represents?"

"Um..." Nick scratched his head, looking at the little green, plastic T-Rex in a cage on the desk. "If I had to GUESS, it'd be...well..." an idea came to him. "...I think it's a test."

"A test?"

"Like a Rorscharch test. You put it on your desk to ask others what they see in it, so you can learn about them." Nick said, letting out a bit of a yawn, stretching his arms wide.

" _Oooooh_." Helen seemed very, very intrigued by this. "A very perceptive answer! Yes, the dinosaur on my desk is meant to help me know my guests."

"Are you sure you there's any real symbolism to be found in a little plastic dino?" Nick asked, tilting his head a bit. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

"I'm a machine. I can never understand symbols or interpret their meanings on their own. But I know humans can." Helen said with a little chuckle.

"What did Piper say?"

"She said that, since Dinos were extinct, the T-Rex was a symbol of a preservation of the past, like the library. A very intriguing answer indeed. A very intelligent one." Helen confessed. "But you must be tired. I can see your eyelids drooping. You need rest. If you are worried about your quarters...the doors can be locked from the inside and unopenable from the exterior. I'll insist to Rolland that he give you a room key."

"Thanks." Nick said with a nod. "I appreciate it, Ms. Helen." he told her, rising up and holding out his hand to shake hers, before remembering she didn't have a proper hand. "Oops. Sorry."

"It's alright. I understand." She warmly intoned, Nick heading back in the direction of the living quarters as he heard Helen turning on a PDA in the wall, and calling to Rolland. A few minutes later...

"Ugh. Here you go. One key." Rolland said, tossing a key at Nick, who caught it against his chest. "Enjoy your stay at Casa De Rolland in the special discount suite." He said, Nick noticing that Rolland had been looking at a book with a title "Dealing With the Loss of Loved Ones: An Introduction to Taxidermy".

"...why are you-?" Nick began to ask before he decided not to ask, and just headed for his new bedroom, intent on not only locking the door, but putting up all the chairs and cupboards and everything else he could against it so Rolland couldn't get in. He went down a long hallway, one of several, passing several bookcases located by little round tables with other books and notepad paper upon them. Going to the room he'd been given, "N4", he opened it up-

"...are you kidding me?" He groaned.

There was scrap metal, bottles, clothing, all tossed around haphazardly. The bed wasn't made, the carpet was torn and ragged, the bathroom smelled...ugh! Nick cringed as he reeled back from it. The friggin' toilet was clogged up! There were cigarette butts all over the nearby desk where a computer laid, and-

Oh! A message had popped up on the screen.

"Ah! You're here. So, shall we get started?"

Nick locked the door, quickly shoving a small bookcase against it as he ran over to the desk, sitting down in the chair after shoving an old, ratty sweater off it and typing away. "Who is this?"

"Doesn't matter. The answer would just be confusing to you."

"What do you want me to start?"

"There's something you've got to find. Cartwright had something in mind for each of these guys. He had something prepared. I don't know exactly what."

"You mean the robots? What was it?"

"Just get to it, okay? Can't stay too long. We'll talk later. And you're right. One of them IS a murderer. Just one of them. Just one. Hopefully that'll ease your worries slightly."

With that, the messages ended, Nick blinking in surprise. Well. He had an ally. Someone was trying to help him. That did make him feel a little bit better. But first thing's first. He had to clean up this rotten mess in the bedroom. Stupid Rolland. This was probably his way of getting even.

Well...he couldn't say he didn't DESERVE it...


	5. The Mysteries Begin

The next day, Nick had one goal and one goal alone.

He couldn't rely on physical evidence. He couldn't use technology to hunt down the truth. The death had occured DECADES before he was even around. Therefore, all he could go on...was PSYCHOLOGY.

Could it be...perhaps...that much like Agatha Christie's famous story "Murder on the Orient Express", all of them were in on it? Maybe. Just maybe. Psychology...looking at the mindset of the criminal by examining the crime, getting to know the suspects, checking their alibis. He had to use, as he remembered his favorite detective, "the little gray cells".

And he'd started it off with searching room after room. He tried again and again to get into various bedrooms, but time and time again he found them locked. CLICK!

"RGGGH..." He would grumble.

CLICK!

"GRRRGGGGH!" Nick was getting incredibly inpatient.

CLICK!

"Kung Fucker Chicken in a BUCKET!" He proclaimed angrily, grabbing hold of a nearby chair in the little hall that led to the bedrooms, slamming it against the door. "OPEN! OPEN! OP-"

And it actually opened up. The door wasn't very tightly locked. He stared in shock, his hazel/green eyes gaping at the sight before him. There, upon a table, were piles and piles of opened-up bottles. There was various junk and other unimportant things lying around like little papers, but...the bottles.

If the BOTTLES were here, that meant...bottlecaps. And every single bottle had had its cap screwed off. He checked all around the room, searching under the singular desk the room had, peering into the trash can within, looking inside of the desk and trying to see if the door had a secret passage...but nothing. Nothing.

He did, however, take notice of some of the papers lying on the floor. He plucked them up, looking them over and was surprised to find they were crumbled-up parts of what was evidently an autobiography.

"We had been waiting for our courier to arrive, all of us playing cards in the saloon. The air was sultry, an intense weight suffocating us as I nervously fiddled with a lock of my hair. As I inhaled the scent from my own long black pigtails, I remembered my grandmother's scent, and how I found she smelled like flowers. Isn't it funny the things you remember just out of the blue?

Flowers...yes. Daisies and sunflowers most of all.

I was thinking of that when we got the call over the radio, and the courier's voice rang out over the line in the saloon. The bartender answered, moustache bristling, brown eyes narrowed angrily. "What in tarnation is taking you so long!?" He asked, his voice fierce and furious.

"I'm sorry, I had to turn back."

"You had to turn back?!"

"Yeah, I had to turn back. I forgot my pants."

There was silence in the saloon. Everyone stopped what they were doing, staring at the radio, mouths agape, eyes wide, the bartender's voice disbelieving and stunned as he repeated "You forgot your pants."

"Yeah, be there in about ten minutes."

He cut off the call, and the bartender slowly turned to the nearest customer at the bar, and repeated it again, as if trying to chew over the words. "He forgot his pants."

Silence reigned for a good two minutes straight. We all stared at each other. And then, at last, I asked the question.

"How do you forget your-"

"Well, I sure as hell don't know!"

And the thing was...it was so stupid. So inane. So ASININE...it had...HAD to be true. If you were going to lie, you wouldn't tell a lie so ridiculously stupid as THAT. You'd say "my horse broke her leg" or "the truck I was riding in ran out of gas" or "It's my mom's birthday and I had to stop to get her a gift". You wouldn't panic and say "I forgot my pants"!

As I write this, ten years later, having seen what Courier Jameson looked like when he DIDN'T have his pants on, I can most definitely say one thing now, looking back on that incident.

Thank HEAVENS he went back for his goddamn pants."

Nick was now laughing so hard and so loud that, as he staggered over to Rolland's room, he actually flopped onto the ground. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" He was guffawing and snorting and laughing so much, he almost vomited right on the carpet, finally...FINALLY managing to surpress his laughter. "HOOOOO...HOOOOOOO...hoooooooo...ohhh, that...that was...that was good! Haaa...haaaa..."

"What on EARTH have you been readin' that's got you bursting at the seams?"

"This hilarious part of somebody's...autobiography! It's...hoo...it's..." Nick panted, wiping his brow, his face unable to stop smiling. "REALLY hilarious! So...just...just wanted to...ask you. Found...a bunch of...of opened bottles...you...got the caps?"

"Ohhhh! You want the CAPS, huh? How come you want them?"

"Well, I dunno if anyone told you, but out in the wilds out there, we use them as money."

"Tell you what. I'm bored out of my MIND. Been weeks since I got to play with anybody and had fun. So let's play a game!" Rolland insisted as he cheerily bowed his little cowboy-hat-wearing head. "I'll give you a hint that'll tell you where the caps MIGHT be. Think you're up for it?"

Nick could hear the horrible GIDDINESS in Rolland's voice. He sounded faaaaaaaaaaaaaar too happy about all this. "I got a feeling you prepared HARD for this. You've got something unpleasant in mind, don't you?"

"Maybe I do! But here's the thing. You humans...deep down, you know better. But you end up choosing to do the wrong thing anyway! So even if the right thing IS just ignoring me...you wanna find out where they are just cuz of how curious you humans get! That's just your nature! You GOTTA know!"

Nick cringed. "Okay MAYBE you got a point. Alright, hit me with your first hint." He agreed.

"Sure! I'm gonna look forward to this."

"I can be really clever when I put my mind to it." Nick insisted to Rolland.

"Ain't about how clever you are!" Rolland laughed. "It's about how FOOLISH you can be! So here's the first hint. Time to go drop..."

And then he made a distinct farting noise.

PPBBBBBTTTTTTTTTTTT.

"...the kids off...at the pool."

Nick's face blanched. Oh GOD. Was...was Rolland serious? He couldn't be suggesting what...oh God help him, he was pretty sure Rolland WAS serious! Cringing in disgust, Nick made his way across Rolland's desk, heading for the nearby bathroom, pushing his way into stall after stall and sure enough, there it was. A playable audiotape lying in a waterproof capsule at the bottom of a toilet. Based on how murky, disgusting, swilly and foul-looking the water was, this disgusting refuse of a toilet had been untouched for MONTHS. Perhaps even years. A gas station would have been ashamed to have this as their toilet.

Cringing and gagging, Nick yanked the audiotape out and pressed "play", as Rolland guffawed loudly from the desk nearby and his voice came out of the audiotape. "Ha ha ha ha ha! I was hoping you'd prove how DIRTY you were willing to get! Hahahahaha! There's a room key to one of the inhabitant's rooms in the pool room. And now that I know how LOW you're willing to go for some money let's see how HIGH you can get!"

Nick glared back at Rolland, but headed off for the pool room, and sure enough, inside the pool table, in the corner pocket, there was one of the keys to the bedrooms. And it was to someone by the name of "Dexter", from the looks of the name upon the recorded audiotape on the desk inside, and a few books lying about with his name on the inside cover.

Nick sat down on the bed, listening to the audiotape, one of several that laid about in the room.

"One thing's for sure. We are leaving tomorrow." said a rather cold, intellectual, forceful voice. The man on the tape sounded QUITE sure of himself. "Our stay here has been utterly pointless. And Knight Roger hasn't been the most helpful auxilary. It's safe to say his main preocupations were playing at the pool table and stuffing himself with pre-war food!"

Nick shook his head back and forth. Sheesh. Not very nice. He'd go looking for more of the clues for Rolland later. He wanted to talk to somebody more considerate, and James seemed a good person to start with. Getting Rolland to open up more by playing his game was a necessary irritation, but James, based on his interactions with him, seemed a LOT more considerate.

"How may I help you?" James inquired as Nick entered the opening hall of the library, taking notice of something he'd not seen before.

An audiotape hidden up in one of the trees in the main hall! "Ah-ha!" Nick snatched it out, looking it over as he smirked a bit. "So THAT'S what Rolland meant by "how high"..."

"I'm glad you're settling in nicely with the library. Do you think you could, perhaps, assist me with a little something?" James requested as Nick looked back at him.

"Oh, of course." Nick offered back. "Anything!"

"Some years ago two people came here. One wore heavy purple robes, the other had heavy armor...military. From what I could tell they were on a scouting mission, and the robed one, Dexter, did extensive research here, consulted a great deal of books but never really told me what he was looking for! I don't know whether they actually found what they were looking for after three weeks, but I'd like you to find out if you can learn anything about them. They left in such a hurry I couldn't find out what they wanted from this place. Perhaps they may have even forgotten something in their haste!" James asked of him.

Nick nodded back. "Sure. I've got one of their audiotapes here. Dexter says his pal was hanging out around the kitchen, I'll check that out and go through their things, see what they were up to." He offered, heading off for the kitchen/dining area of Hypatia's library as he began searching from table to table. He finally found what he was looking for, buried in the recesses of one of the large, dark reddish/purple plushy seats...another audiotape which he began to play.

"Dexter Aldridge of the Brotherood of Steel here. About time I found something relevant to-ACK! Roger, stop frightening me like that! What is it now? Wait...you smell like cigarettes! Did you actually smoke inside the library?! Are you crazy!?"

Nick shook his head, rolling his eyes. Dexter was complaining about Roger smoking in the cigarette. As he rolled his eyes, they caught sight of the other side of the pool room, the game room that had a little basketball hoop...and underneath one of the metal cabinets that held balls and various sports equipment was another audiotape!

Unfortunately, the more Nick listened, the less he liked this "Dexter" character.

"I can't believe this TOASTER has the nerve to deny us access to the living quarters on the sole grounds that Roger lost BOTH of our keys! We tried to sleep in the movie theater but Erickson's grown so disgustingly fat through his constant binge-eating that he snores when he sleeps! Even AFTER I kicked him onto the ground!"

"What a jerk!" Nick grumbled. "Screw you too, bucko!" He grumbled as he made his way back to James, but he stopped behind a bookcase, noticing James was...humming.

Hmmm. Intriguing. Nick waited a little while, noticing James was humming the tune "Georgia". Intriguing indeed! But still, he wanted to tell James what he'd found. "I got some of their audiotapes. What's...the Brotherood of Steel?" Nick asked as he rubbed the back of his neck. "They sound familiar but..."

"Ahh, they're a faction in the Wastes that hordes technology. They yearn to one day return to the outside world with what they've hoarded to restore the world in better times." James intoned.

"They sure don't sound like the right people to do that if they're using jerks like DEXTER here." Nick remarked. "No offense but he sounds really pompous."

"Could I ask you a little...personal question? What is it like to scratch an itch?" James inquired. "How would you rate it?"

Nick stared at him. It was such an...odd, silly question. But also kind of...cute to ask.

"Well, um...I don't know how to put it. I guess its sort of...um...it's..." Nick bit his lip. "If I had to put it...five out five. I do like scratching myself. It HURTS, but its a good kind of hurt."

"Factual as it gets! Thank you!" James remarked as he took Nick's hand and shook it eagerly, Nick looking down at this, a little stunned, and then nodded back at him, and headed back to Dexter's room. Maybe if he did another search he'd find another audiotape.

Luckily for Nick, he did. The audiotape had been in one place he hadn't thought to look...hidden inside of a book lying right on the desk. He opened up the book, "The Count of Monte Crisco", and found the audiotape inside, playing it. Slowly but surely, his face began to fall as he listened to what Dexter had to say.

"How the old world managed to waste so many resources on vapid enterprises is beyond me. What is the point of a record of all these useless topics?! This isn't a library...its a GRAVEYARD FOR POINTLESS KNOWLEDGE. Give me a year and I'll sort out a hundred...no...FIFTY books worth keeping while we cremate the rest and make room for a new chapter! The stupidity of these pre-war novels in particular are too much for me to endure!"

"Oh you-YOU-" Nick got so mad he almost tossed the audiotape away, a dark glare briefly flaring over his face. "Well screw you too, Dexter!" He snapped, stomping out of the room, racing back to James, and handing over the audiotape. "I got something you need to hear." He remarked, handing it over to him. "But it's NOT pretty. Brace yourself." He muttered as he played the audiotape for James.

The robot had no face, but Nick was sure that, if he HAD, it would be falling with every passing second the tape played. At last, James let loose a long sigh.

"Ohhhh deeeaaar. I will need much time to digest this." He muttered.

"I'm sorry. Anything else I could help you with?" Nick offered.

"There is ONE more guest I'd like you to investigate. Your friend Darren, regrettably, had an unfortunate...incident. He got very drunk one night and began throwing insults at the books, us, and our "mother". It was a very interesting and enriching experience, especially from a vocaublary standpoint, but we ultimately had to stop him from blowing up the bibliographies with C4. We were, unfortunately, forced to ban him from the library because of this."

"Oh DAMN." Nick murmured. "Geez. That sounds so unlike him..." He gulped. "What books was he trying to destroy?"

"Economy, social studies, cognitive sciences, cybernetics. It didn't make much sense to us, but it looked as though, despite his drunken stupor, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing. He picked books off from seperate selves, placed them in a pile, and then lined them up with C4. A shame too. He was so eager to educate himself...it really surprised us when he took that "literary aggression"...well, surprised everyone but Helena. She's not yet disclosed why."

Nick thoughtfully rubbed his chin. "Ok. Could I check his room?"

"Most certainly. He tossed the key right at my face, so I held onto it. Here." James reached into his chest compartment, pulling out a key, giving it to Nick as Nick nonchalantly sauntered on off for the bedrooms again, Rolland holding up a-

"What the heck?"

"Here! It's a plastic bag! Take it and wrap it around your head!" Rolland darkly laughed. "Its the latest fashion!"

"Why don't you put that bag in the trash, Rolland? Along with the remains of your dignity?" Nick wittily retorted.

"Touche. I've been wounded." Rolland snickered as Nick headed for Darren's room, unlocking it and glancing about. There were notes all over the nicely-carpeted floor, the bed wasn't properly made up, and various books had been left lying around. He plucked up one of the nearby pieces of paper, examining the note. Yep. Darren's writing alright!

"I should really begin to keep track of where I hide them. I've "found" another one of those weird kecards. How many of those are there? I tried it everywhere I could but I couldn't find any door it's supposed to open. I'll hide it meantime in the..."

The word was scribbled out. Gibberish written in its place along with the words after this. "In the Gibberish". More gibberish. And then it resumed. "I wouldn't want to answer why I have those, especially if Rolland stumbles onto it during one of his famous surprise visits."

Nick scratched his head, then plucked up another piece of paper. "A" was scribbled all the way down to the end of the page. Then another paper-

OH.

"Want to know by which HOLE someone is trying to SCREW you over? Pay attention to what he isn't saying."

Ah ha. Now we had a clue. He looked up against the wall, and saw the ventilation system installed...the big, circular ventilation system covering up a hole...screwed in tight. He'd have to check these out wherever he could, he was SURE a secret laid hidden. But then he took notice of another note lying nearby.

"Well, figures. Fuck. Couldn't have done shit for them even if I'd been a doctor. Fuck, man. Just...fuck."

Nick's lips pursed a bit. What was all this about? How strange. What was going on? He picked up another note-

Holy crap, the writing was barely legible! It was chicken scratch and frantic and panicked and sweat had dribbled down onto it.

"I carfully writing my toughts as they com. By writing I ensure that wat I am learnin stays anchored in my mind. So I writ agaein and agaein and again. SHEIT I cant get this rite."

"Oh, Darren...you're almost unrecognizable." Nick mumbled, kneeling down on the floor, picking up note after note, many of which were gibberish as well, or "A's" written out to the end of the page, but then, at last, he found another interesting note. On the corner of the page...

"A+1=B." Nick muttered. "It must be a password." He murmured. He pocketed it, and then headed out of the room, thinking...thinking.

Poor Darren. He remembered what he'd read before, in Darren's stash...how the more Darren had read, the more depressed he'd become, learning about the horrors the Old World had brought. He must have taken so much to the bottle that even being able to do basic things like reading and writing had begun to prove difficult on a daily basis and had finally decided to just destroy all the most potentially dangerous books in a big, final blaze, making sure NOBODY could ever make use of them.

Who could he talk to about Darren? About the Darren HE'D known?

...Helena. He went over to her room, knocking on the door as she looked up at him, having stepped away from the intercom.

"Um, Helena, could I talk to you about Darren? You see, he was actually a really good friend of mine. He told me all about his archeological digs he'd go on his parents with and how much he wanted to read what else happened in the "Chronicles of Narnia" and the first book he ever read was "The BFG" by Roald Dahl-"

"I ADORE that book." Helena said with a little chuckle. "Yes, I remember Darren well. Quite a lovely young man. He kept bringing books to me. The first time was because he didn't know how to read and wanted help. The next times was because he said he simply enjoyed hearing my voice." Helena intoned, her tone becoming wistful, full of warm memories. "He liked poetry and songbooks. It didn't bother him that I couldn't sing! In fact, one of them in particular made Rolland come around!"

"What one was that?"

"The thought of you sends me shivery, I'm dressed in lace, sailing down a black reverie!

My heeaaeart is throoooown to the pebbles and the boatmen! All the tiii-iiii-iiiiime I find I'm living...in that evening! With that feeling...of sticky love insiiiiide!"

"Ooooh! Nice."

"Yes, I rather enjoyed Darren. Not so much Dexter, though Roger Erickson was another guest here who was also quite kind."

"Oh?" Nick asked, tilting his head to the side.

"Yes. He was very agreeable. I had many nice conversations with him. He was very curious about us, and nice enough to treat me like a person, and sometimes like a lady. It wasn't the WAY he treated me that was kind, but the...intent behind him. He and Darren had a lot in common. How is Darren, by the way?"

"He's..." Nick choked up, a shudder going through him, his tone becoming a little dead. "He's dead, Helena. Some slavers got to him. I'd been out in town trying to get supplies and they beat the hell out of me and followed my trail back to him and...and..." He trailed off, covering his face, forcing back a shuddering sob. "...he's gone." He mumbled out.

Helena stared at Nick for what seemed to be a long, long time. Then she spoke, spoke in a quiet, tender fashion.

"Do you want to tell me how you first met him?" She asked. "Come, please...have a seat. I'll get you a drink and everything and you can tell me your whole story." She offered, going over to a nearby refrigerator, getting out a cola and handing it to Nick as he sat down on the couch opposite the desk, looking Helena over.

"Well..." Nick began, sipping on the coke. "...where should I start?"

Helena's voice was soothingly seductive.

"At the beginning. Let me give you an example, just to help you..." She began to say.

...

...

...

... "Whuh?"

Nick shot up, looking around the room, blinking. How strange. How VERY strange. He felt over his chest, his stomach, his face, a stunned look on his face, as Helena smiled warmly back at him. "Oh, how good! You're awake!"

"I...fell asleep while you were talking to me?" He inquired. "Oh geez, how embarrasing. I don't even really remember what we were talking about, it all seems like a blur."

"I admit, you were suffering from some serious trauma underneath, despite your outward appearance. There were some complications."

"What sort of trauma?" Nick inquired. "What complications?"

"People who suffer from brain trauma often encounter a wide range of personality and coordination disorders as well as language impairment issues. Social disinhibitions, extraordinary risk-taking, a dangerous tendency to transgress rules...all very common. Did you observe any of that?"

"Well..." Nick scratched his head. "I tend to leap into action kinda recklessly. A LOT. I often have felt like I'm...expendable."

"I hear you." Helena softly intoned, awkwardly scribbling something indescipherable upon a notepad.

"And I kind of have an anger problem. Like, if I lost at checkers or chess, sometimes I get the urge to just launch it right across the room and break it into tiny pieces!" Nick added nervously. "I think it sort of runs in the family. Is it...serious? Is there something genuinely wrong with me? Inside my head, that...that I just never really knew about, but you've found?" He wondered aloud. "Did...did you, like, scan my brain?"

"Here. This should help." Helena offered. "When you told me what happened to you, there was one thing that really intrigued me. How you felt after finding out about Darren's death. Thinking about the man with the mohawk. Why did you not go after him after what he did? Why did you decide to go here, first?"

"Because..." Nick hesitated. "...are you...worried that man may have damaged my frontal lobe when he and friends beat the hell out of me?" He murmured. "And my decision-making's been screwed up somehow?"

"Exactly. If you understand why I am worried, it may save us some time." Helena commented calmly.

"Well...what do you think I should do?"

"Think about your motives. And during your stay here, and as long as you allow it, I will regularly monitor your cerebreal activity. On your side, I may ask you to read some books, which may help you put your motivations into light."

"Okay!" Nick offered. "What's the first book?"

"The Count of Monte Crisco, actually."

"I've already read that, actually..." Nick said with a smile. "It's an old classic..."


End file.
